Calamity Will Strike
by Penn Flinn
Summary: An attack on STAR Labs leaves the team vulnerable, taken captive by people who will do whatever it takes to eradicate metahumans. Targeted for their involvement in the particle accelerator explosion, Caitlin, Cisco, and Barry are forced wait for rescue or chance of escape. But hell waits for no man and no meta. Monsters create monsters, and they are fast emerging from the dark.
1. Chapter 1

**Hi friends, I'm back! Bearing a brand new longfic in the terrible wasteland of hiatus.**

 **I've had a few requests for another kidnapping fic, and this is the result of that. Technically this is based on a section of my fic "Candlewax and Lightning," but I have taken a lot of liberties with it and it's not necessary to read that first. This has been on my mind for a while-it's been exceptionally painful to write at times but also a great joy, and I am so excited to share it with you!**

 **Takes place somewhere vaguely in the middle of season 2, post-Earth-2 shenanigans, while Harry is off with his backpack looking for Jesse.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

As with most things when it came to Team Flash, everything was going fairly okay—until it wasn't. Yet another hiss of static burst through the monitors, again followed the obligatory "owww."

"Barry?" Caitlin said. "Barry, are you okay?"

"What's happening out there?" Cisco chimed in beside her. "Is the thing working?"

" _The_ thing _hasn't had a chance to work yet,_ " Barry's breathless voice came gargling through. " _I can't get close to him. He keeps knocking me off course_."

"All you have to do is get a hand on him," Cisco said. "Just a little tap. Like touch football."

" _Do you want to come out here and try_?"

"Point taken." He looked to Caitlin for support.

"Maybe speed isn't the answer," she offered. "His vertigo waves are going to be exponentially worse the faster you go. It'll just exaggerate your skewed trajectory."

" _So you're saying I should attack at normal speed_?" Barry said.

Although Barry couldn't see the gesture, Caitlin shrugged. "It's worth a shot. You'll still be disoriented, but it might be easier to fight through it if you're going slower."

 _Might_. Caitlin bit down on the uncertainty of the word. With each new threat they faced, this was the worst part. The experimentation. The _might_. The gap between theory and implementation with no room for controlled tests. If her hunches were ever wrong, if she made a bad call, the failed lab experiment would be Barry's life.

She and Cisco blindly waited on the sidelines—although often it didn't feel so much like sidelines as open graves waiting to be filled—while sounds of Barry's fight burst through the comms at random intervals. Grunts, pants, crunches.

Then another burst of static. Caitlin clutched at the edge of the desk.

"Barry…?"

She didn't know how many time she'd called his name into the microphones at the desk, fearing non-reply. How many times she'd gripped this desk, terrified.

" _I'm okay,_ " came the reply.

And Caitlin couldn't count the number of times she'd let out a sigh of relief like she did then, expelling all of her anxiety in one go. How many times her heart swooped back up to her chest where it belonged, just at the sound of Barry's very-alive voice.

" _Your tech worked, Cisco,_ " Barry breathed. " _I'm bringing this guy in now. Be there in a sec_."

Cisco cut the feed, and he and Caitlin both sat back wearily in their chairs.

"Job well done," Cisco said, offering out a hand with mock seriousness.

"You too," Caitlin said, accepting the gesture and giving his hand a firm shake. "As always."

She leaned back in her chair, longing for something to put her feet up on. Even though they'd done this hundreds of times, it was still exhausting—not to mention how Barry must've felt. This was just part of the ritual, though, and she wondered if she shouldn't take it for granted. With a notable exception or two, it was always the same story. Barry finding the meta and getting beaten. Caitlin patching him up, often exercising her traditional disapproving look. Cisco developing some new tech to counter the meta's abilities. Caitlin and Cisco coaching Barry through a second fight, and a hard-won victory. The cast behind the table had changed, of course. Instead of wheelchair-bound Eobard Thawne, they often had his double, and recently they even had the much-appreciated support of Joe and Iris.

Speaking of which—Caitlin looked down just as her phone buzzed. On screen popped up a picture of Iris: a silly one from the last time they'd gone out, when Iris had out-drunk one of the bikers at the bar who had challenged her. In the photo, Iris was posing with arms out in a muscle-man pose. They'd had to practically carry her out of the bar afterward, but the memory was worth it.

Smiling at the photo, feeling light in her own adrenaline crash and relief, she picked up the phone and answered.

"Iris."

" _Hey_ ," came the familiar voice. " _Everything okay? Picture News is going crazy. The Flash fought a metahuman right outside our building. Thought you might have some juicy leads_."

"The juiciest," Caitlin teased. "Just a little trouble with our meta of the week. It's solved, though. Much damage downtown?"

" _A bit, but nothing we can't handle. Ironically, it was Barry doing the destruction. He couldn't seem to run straight._ "

"Meta with vertigo beams," Caitlin explained. "I think it was a little disorienting."

" _Ah_." Iris lowered her voice slightly. " _Need me to come over? I can try to get out of work_."

"No, I don't think that's necessary," said Caitlin, eyeing Cisco, who was starting to hook up his phone to the speakers with a mischievous look on his face. "Maybe after you're done with work tonight? We could all go out."

" _Sounds great_ ," Iris said. " _I'll come with my dad later tonight when he stops by to pick up this meta_."

"No rush," Caitlin said. "I don't know how long it'll take for this vertigo to wear off. Thanks for calling. See you when I see you."

She hung up and tossed the phone on the desk.

"Iris is coming over?" Cisco said absently, still scrolling through his own phone.

"Not until late tonight," Caitlin responded. "I thought we'd go out."

"With Harry?" Cisco grimaced. "He's also coming back tonight, remember?"

Right. Harry had been in and out so much lately in his search for Jesse, Caitlin had lost track of when he was actually at STAR.

Caitlin winked. "Maybe we should get him a babysitter for the night."

Cisco barked out a laugh and kicked his feet up on the desk, as Caitlin was always too polite to do. "I wonder how much babysitters charge these days to look after three-year-olds."

"Hm." Caitlin nodded at Cisco's phone. "What are you playing with over there?"

"Putting together a little playlist for us. Wait for it…" He dramatically lifted his finger. After a wholly unnecessary pause, he pressed a button on his phone, and immediately the music began blaring through the cortex. As it did, Cisco reached into one of his secret drawers and pulled out two chocolate bars, one of which he kept and one he tossed to Caitlin.

Cisco started munching on his chocolate bar as Caitlin struggled with her wrapper. She jerked her head up to indicate the music. "What's this?"

"Mm." With his mouth full, Cisco couldn't say anything, but he raised a finger— _wait_.

Caitlin listened, and at that moment, the lyrics changed:

 _You give me vertigo, vertigo._

"Oh my God," Caitlin said, and, beside her, Cisco dissolved into barely-contained giggles.

Right on cue, an alarm light began flashing on the computer screen for one of the pipeline cells. Cisco pulled up one of the video feeds to see their meta securely locked in the cell.

"Looks like Barry is back," said Cisco. "I wonder what took him so long."

In answer, a concussive bang sounded in the hallway outside the cortex. Cisco turned down the volume of the music a few clicks. A flash of lightning in the hallway, then Barry himself appeared in the doorway, staggering into the doorframe.

"How's it going, dude? Going a little slow," Cisco said.

"Want to tell me how long this vertigo is going to last?" Barry said miserably.

Caitlin frowned. "Is it that bad?"

Barry gave her a withering look. Almost as demonstration, he sped forward, directly toward her. At least, it started out as straight toward her. Where he ended up was somewhere behind her, colliding with a side wall and landing flat on his back.

Cisco, for what it was worth, kept giggling.

"Is this song called 'Vertigo'?" Barry called from the floor. Cisco giggled louder. Barry groaned.

Rolling her eyes, Caitlin swallowed her bite of chocolate and moved toward Barry. "C'mere. Sit down."

Barry stood, visibly wobbly on his feet. He turned toward her and collided with another doorframe. Caitlin stifled a laugh with a hand and used the other to guide Barry over to a seat. Like a drunk man, Barry was swaying, his feet tangling up around each other, his eyes squinting to find focus. Silently Caitlin began cataloguing all of his symptoms and running over potential solutions. The usual dose of concern still lingered under the amusement's surface. Earlier, the effects from the vertigo beam Barry had been hit with had gone away fairly quickly, but that time it had only glanced off of him. This time the energy had been much more prolonged, intense. Even when Caitlin got him into a chair, he looked close to blind, dazed, on the verge of passing out or throwing up or both. The downsides of being a metahuman, she supposed. Especially a crime-fighting one.

"Put these on. I'll be right back," Caitlin said briskly, taking a stack of dark blue STAR clothes from a nearby table and handing them to Barry, who was already in the process of removing the sticky Flash suit.

Modesty was not something they treasured in the lab, not after nine months of caring for a comatose Barry, plus two more years of patching up scrapes, re-setting broken bones, cutting him open and stitching him up. Even so, Caitlin liked to give privacy when she could—maybe it was the shy part of her that had been instructed long ago not to wear too-short skirts. She exited the lab quietly and headed down to one of her larger medical stashes a floor below.

Once there, she moved slower than usual, allowing time for Barry to get adjusted and for her to sift through her own thoughts. With metahumans, treatments were unpredictable, often spur-of-the-moment. Her degree had not prepared her, for example, for yanking two-inch metal spikes out of rapidly-regenerating human flesh. Or keeping a friend on a physical plane while he wavered between realities.

Treatment, again, became experimentation. All of it was, at the end of the day. Experimentation. The big _might_. The theories that would keep her friends alive or kill them. The theories that had, ironically, created them.

After searching around for a bit in the lab, a dull crash on the floor above caught Caitlin's attention. She allowed herself a private grin, wondering what new surface Barry had managed to smack into, picturing the way Cisco would laugh uproariously regardless. The thought gave her a warm sort of rush in her chest, the biggest payoff to her unofficial job at STAR and the only true salve for the worst of the anxieties that scalded her. Eager to go back up and return to the high spirits of the cortex, Caitlin gathered up every item she thought might be useful and carried the bundle carefully out of the room.

As she climbed the stairs, she caught strains of the next vertigo-themed song on Cisco's playlist. The tune was vaguely familiar, though she couldn't place the name, so she began quietly humming along as she ascended.

"How many songs could you possibly find with 'vertigo' in the lyrics?" Caitlin called out with a playful lilt in her voice. She rounded the corner into the doorway of the cortex.

The first thing she saw was Barry and Cisco, sprawled out at odd angles on the floor near the main computer bank. With the joyful sections of her brain still active, Caitlin's first instinct was that they were, unbelievably, pulling some kind of prank.

The second thing she saw was Cisco's half-eaten chocolate bar lying on the floor, and her phone smashed beside it.

The third thing she saw, at first only in her periphery, was a shadowy figure pointing a gun at her chest. It was also the last thing she saw—the glass bottles and bandages and medication fell from her arms, the barrel of the gun flashed, and the dart that sprouted from her chest sent her tumbling into a cold, violent darkness.

* * *

 **Thank you so much for reading! If you're new here, I generally post new chapters Wednesdays and Sundays, so I'll see you this weekend! If you want to yell at me for any reason, please leave a comment below! I love hearing from you guys, especially if you're interested in what's coming next.**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hey all! Thanks so much for the overwhelming and positive feedback on the first chapter! I hope you continue to enjoy-I love hearing from you.**

 **On to the angst party!**

* * *

There was a crick in her neck, and an ache in her back, and Caitlin wondered, briefly, if she'd fallen asleep in one of the cortex chairs again. She would often pass out sitting up when the team would have movie nights at the lab, though she couldn't recall what movie they'd been watching, or who she was with, or when she had fallen asleep.

It was too cold for the cortex, though, and the first voice she latched on to—Cisco's—sounded quiet and intense and desperate.

"…please, whatever this is, you don't have to do it. Please, I…"

Caitlin tried to shift in her seat, rising groggily from that black space that encompassed her, but found that she could not move her arms. The rest of the rise to consciousness was quick, cold, shocking. She opened her eyes and looked around blearily.

Even though she was physically seeing her surroundings, she still didn't quite process the reality of them. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the dim light and gradually accepted the enormity of her current location. A warehouse. With high ceilings, shadowy stacks of boxes, and blacked-out windows, the space was horribly reminiscent of the place Caitlin had been taken to by Snart and Rory.

Next she focused on the figures in front of her. She was indeed sitting up in a chair, but it was a hard chair and her hands were secured with zip-ties to the arms—as were the hands of her two companions. Barry and Cisco sat at angles to her, so they all formed a kind of circle facing inward. Barry slumped forward, blood dripping from his hairline, unconscious, but Cisco was alert and straining against his restraints.

"There's still time to back out of this," he was saying. "You don't have to—"

"We don't have to do this? Yeah, we could've predicted that line from so-called heroes."

There were two other people in the room with them, Caitlin saw now. One was motionless farther back in the shadows, tapping on an old laptop. The one speaking to Cisco stood with arms crossed, right at the edge of their circle. Even though Caitlin's vision was still fuzzy, she noted the harsh cut of his wide, muscled shoulders, the downturn of his mouth, the swath of thin, shiny scars on his jaw and down his neck.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Cisco said. "We're not…so-called heroes."

"Clearly," the man said. Caitlin shifted, and his eyes snapped her direction. "Ah, this one's awake."

Cisco also looked to her, his face a mixture of relief and desperation. In her muddled state, that anxiety hadn't set in quite as much as it should have. All she could focus on was the mounting nausea in her stomach from whatever she had been drugged with.

"What's wrong with him?" Caitlin slurred, attention going back to Barry.

"Just a little knock on the head," the man said. "We had a bit of a tough time keeping this one down. He wore through the drug surprisingly fast."

Caitlin and Cisco shared a brief, panicked glance. For the first time, it truly registered that Barry was dressed in the navy blue STAR t-shirt and sweatpants and not his Flash suit. These people, whoever they were, didn't know who they had kidnapped.

"Jason." The person at the laptop turned around: a woman with a hard-set mouth and shadows under her eyes, visible even in the darkness. The ends of her sleeves were frayed, her hair a red cloud of frizz. She jerked her head back, and the large man reluctantly left the circle and joined her in the shadows of one of the aisles of boxes.

"Are you okay?" Cisco said in an exaggerated whisper.

"Same as you, I think," Caitlin replied. As soon as she said it, Barry stirred in his seat.

"Hey, dude, don't freak out," Cisco said once the speedster had groaned back to consciousness. "Well, maybe freak out a little."

Somehow, even in that chill of fear that the warehouse instilled, the attempted lightness gave a brief sense of normalcy. Further comfort came from the simple fact that Barry was conscious, with them—but that comfort was tainted almost immediately.

"What's wrong?" Caitlin asked as Barry scrunched his face and hung his head low again.

"My head," he mumbled.

"That's normal," Caitlin said. "You were just drugged and knocked out by blunt force."

"No," Barry said. "The vertigo. It's still there. It's worse."

Well—that was less than ideal.

"Business as usual, huh?" Cisco said shakily, testing his restraints again.

Barry tugged at his wrists too, more violently than Cisco. When the zip-ties had no give, he swallowed hard. "Where are we?"

"Isn't that the question of the day?" The man and woman were back, emerging from the shadows like something out of a nightmare. The man shoved lightly at the side of Barry's head in a faux-playful gesture. "Maybe, if you're cooperative, I'll tell you which state you're in."

Caitlin's stomach flipped. How long had they been unconscious? With the blackout shades on every window, it was impossible to tell what time of day it was. Surely this guy—Jason—was bluffing.

"Cooperate? Cooperate with what?" Cisco asked. "Are you some kind of evil scientists?"

"No," said the woman. "That's why we need you. You are the scientists for STAR Labs, are you not?"

"Some of them," Cisco said.

"Don't be modest," the woman sneered. "We know most everyone quit after the particle accelerator explosion. You are the only ones who bothered to stick around that decrepit place. I bet you're even proud of what happened, aren't you?"

"Proud of what happened?" Caitlin said. "You mean the accelerator explosion?"

"Creating all of these metahumans in one go?" the woman continued. "An impressive feat."

Cisco groaned. "Oh, tell me you're not one of those people who just want revenge on us for that. It was two years ago. And you're far from original."

"Metahumans are abominations," Jason cut in. "They're destructive, and abnormal, and disgusting. And you—you created all of them. You even work with one, don't you? The all-powerful Flash. The Flash who almost destroyed the entire city last year."

"Clearly you didn't get the memo or see the posters," Cisco spat. "Hero of Central City? There was a whole rally."

"People are silly, and afraid to take action. These metahumans have been a plague on our city since day one. Nowhere is safe." Jason began circling their group again.

"So, what?" Barry said. "You're gonna kill us for creating these metas? If you're going to do it, just do it, so we don't have to listen to your bigoted crap anymore."

"Oh, we're not going to kill you," Jason said. "Not yet. You're scientists, and you know these metas best, which is why we need your help. You're going to help us track and destroy every meta in this city."

A pause.

"That's impossible," Caitlin said. "How do you propose we do that?"

"That's for you to figure out," said Jason. "You created these powers, you can take them away. And if not, surely you can think of a way to eliminate the metahumans permanently. They deserve to be punished."

"You're insane," Cisco said. "Even if there was a way to do that, what makes you think we'd ever agree to it?"

Jason paused in his pacing, stopping curiously in front of Cisco. "You talk too much," he said. "But I have an answer for you." He leaned close. "Because there are plenty of ways to make you suffer before we're ready to kill you."

He reached for Cisco's hand and Cisco jerked. Jason's body shielded the scene, but Caitlin could hear everything—the distinct _snap_ and the strangled cry that followed.

"Do you understand now?" Jason said.

Cisco's moan was transformed into another scream as a second snap echoed through the space.

"Stop," Caitlin said, panicked. "Wait, stop. You can't do this. Like you said, the Flash is on our side. He'll figure out we're missing and he'll hunt you down. But it's not too late to turn back."

At this, Jason turned around toward Caitlin. While the attention should have scared her, she had eyes only for Cisco, who was hunched forward with his eyes squeezed shut, two of the fingers on his left hand bent at unnatural angles. Soon enough, though, her view was again blocked by Jason, who had this time taken his stand directly in front of her.

"The Flash is on your side, is he?" he said, leaning down close to her face. "The Flash is going to come save his damsel in distress?"

She couldn't help it. With the level of contempt inside of her, there was no room for fear. She gathered saliva on her tongue and spat directly in his face.

A moment, a beat, as Jason considered this. Then he stood, wound back an arm, and sank his fist into her face. The pain was immediate, and sharp; she distinctly felt a ring on one of his fingers as it opened up a cut along the bridge of her nose. Dazed, Caitlin thought he might strike again, but he drew away and wiped at his own face. There was fire in his eyes, an uncontrollable rage, and at once Caitlin knew they were dealing with someone unbounded, unpredictable.

He rubbed his knuckles and stepped away as Caitlin tried to regain her senses.

"The Flash will never realize you're gone," he said. "You want to know why? Because we set up explosives at each entrance to your precious lab before we left. Anyone who tries to enter will be blown to pieces."

That statement stunned Caitlin more than the punch. Again, she wondered about the possibility of a bluff—but the smug look in Jason's eyes quenched all of that hope.

He turned toward the woman with the laptop. "What do you say we give these kids some time to brainstorm?"

"I think that's a good idea," said the woman. "They're smart. They won't need long to come up with something."

Jason grunted. He gave Caitlin another look and she responded with the fiercest glare she could muster—which probably wasn't much, given how much the most recent revelation had shaken her. On his way out, he passed Cisco and clapped him heartily on his left shoulder. Cisco flinched violently, his eyes still closed.

Then he and the woman were gone, the woman snapping the laptop shut and tucking it under her arm as she went.

* * *

 **Thanks so much for reading! Things are just getting started. As always, please leave a comment on your way out with your thoughts!**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	3. Chapter 3

**Warnings for this chapter inlcude blood and dubious science. That pretty much holds true for the rest of the story, to be honest.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

Once Caitlin was sure their captors were gone, she allowed her face to fall. "Cisco. Are you alright?"

"Peachy," Cisco said breathlessly. His uninjured hand told a different story, wrapped so tightly around the arm of the chair his knuckles were stark white. "You?"

In truth, Caitlin's cheekbone throbbed and a warm trickle of blood snaked down the bridge of her nose. However, she just nodded. "I'm fine."

"Do you think he's telling the truth?" Barry asked. "About the explosives?"

Cisco gritted his teeth. "I'm not keen on questioning him."

All at once, Caitlin's breath caught. "Wells. And Joe and Iris."

Barry frowned. "What about them?"

"They're all coming to the lab tonight." The dread was creeping down Caitlin's spine like ice water. "Joe and Iris are coming to pick up Vertigo. Wells is getting back from his trip." All of the jokes about babysitters, all plans about going out on the town with Iris, turned sour in her mouth, and, again, she felt like she was about to vomit.

"Okay, it's okay, we'll escape before they ever make it to the lab," said Barry, always the optimist, though perhaps driven by desperation this time. "We'll figure out a way to get out and warn them."

"We don't even know what time it is," Caitlin said. "They could—they could already be on their way. They could already be there."

"I think if anything happened," Cisco said, "they would rub it in our faces."

"Still, time is of the essence," Barry said. Perhaps he could see the way Caitlin's exterior was crumbling to match her interior, because he strove desperately forward. "So, ideas?"

"Whatever we do, we have to be quick about it." Cisco nodded up at one of the stacks of boxes. "I doubt they have audio, but they can sure as hell see every move we make." Sure enough, on top of one of the stacks, an old surveillance camera blinked red.

"Doing things quick?" Caitlin said, grasping for whatever positivity she could muster. "Good thing we have the Flash on our side."

"Um." Barry shifted. "About that."

"The vertigo?" Cisco said dully.

"Even if I can phase out these ties, I don't know how far I'd get," Barry admitted. "I'm having a hard time focusing. Odds are I'd wipe out halfway across the floor."

"You don't have to fight them," Caitlin said. "You just have to last long enough to get out of here and get help."

"Absolutely not," Barry said. "I'm not leaving you."

"You leaving us is what's going to save us," Caitlin said firmly. "Please. You have to try."

"And what happens if he makes it out of his restraints and can't make it out of the building?" Cisco said. "You heard these guys. They think metahumans are the scum of the earth. They want them to suffer. You think they're going to be forgiving if they find out Barry is the Flash?"

Caitlin chewed her lip. Again, he was right, and she didn't want to admit it. She certainly didn't want to put any of them in more danger than necessary, and she knew that even on the slim chance that Barry was able to control his powers long enough to escape from the zip-ties, he would likely only endanger himself more by doing so. The last vestiges of hope slipped out of her grasp. Barry saw this and set his jaw.

"I'll try, though," he said. "Let me try."

The next bit of time was spent watching Barry attempt to phase through his bindings, to no success. Caitlin supposed they might have better spent their time coming up with a plan to talk their way out of Jason's plan, but Barry was insistent upon trying to control his powers. The whole time, the anxiety built in Caitlin's stomach, the blacked-out windows doing nothing to ease her fright. In a way, she was used to the danger and the suspense of the situation; what she wasn't used to was the actual reality of it, the real threat of these two criminals, the rawness of the circumstance that cut deep into her confidence.

"I'm sorry," Barry said at last with a frustrated sigh. "I can't. This vertigo."

"Understandable," Caitlin said, trying to remain light. "Okay. What's our next plan?"

Her attention was divided between the plan for moving forward and Cisco's broken fingers. It was clear that the engineer was struggling to remain composed. His face was slick with sweat, his body rigid with the effort to remain still.

"For your sakes, I hope you have a 'next plan.'"

Heavy footfalls announced the arrival of Jason and his companion. Even with the passage of time, they didn't look any less imposing. To the contrary: both looked as if they knew the weight that time had imposed on their captives. In addition, both now had knives visible on their hips.

"Want to fill us in on what you've come up with?" the woman said. "A way to target all metahumans?"

Barry was the first to speak. "We can't do it," he said boldly. "It's impossible."

"Really?" said Jason. "I thought I'd made it clear what was in store if you didn't agree to help."

"What are we supposed to do?" Caitlin said. "You're giving us an impossible task."

"You know," Jason said, "I used to believe things were impossible. That was before I watched the sky light up with that particle accelerator explosion and before I watched metahumans tear apart the city I call home. I don't believe in impossibility now."

With that, he drew out the knife from his belt.

"Threatening us isn't going to make things less impossible," she ventured. Jason fixed his gaze on her.

"What are you, then?" he asked. "Resident wet blanket of the group?"

"Caitlin Snow," said the woman, still positioning the laptop on her arm, her small eyes scanning the screen rapidly. "Biology."

Her own name struck a new chord of fear within Caitlin. It was one thing to be anonymous to psychopathic kidnappers; for them to know her name and her position gave a new angle to her level of danger.

"Got that from my Facebook?" she challenged. In pressurized situations like this, she found that she was much more ballsy than usual. Probably not the best trait, given the fact that Jason's knife was glinting just feet from her.

"No online profile could give us this delightful perspective," Jason said, advancing on her with the knife. "Personality to go with the brains. Impressive."

"I bet she knows about the metahumans," said the woman. She stayed way at the edge of the circle, somehow detached, yet menacing in her detachment.

"Oh, I have no doubt." Jason bent to eye-level with her. "You know all about what makes these metahumans tick, don't you? You've worked with the Flash."

"Even if she does know, she's not going to tell you," said the woman coolly.

"You think?" Jason said, bringing the knife up to Caitlin's face and twirling it. Caitlin's heart fluttered. The sharp edge hovered inches from her face.

"You can't do anything to threaten me," she said, forcing herself to keep a straight face. "I won't give you anything."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Oh, we're still going this route?" He stood up and moved backward. "What part of 'suffering' didn't you understand?"

And, to Caitlin's horror, he took a stand behind Barry's chair.

"The lovely thing about having three acquaintances—friends—together, is that it's much more effective than a single person. It's much more effective, actually, to have another person to threaten, another person that the subject can't live without."

Without warning, Jason slashed the knife down on Barry's arm, and Caitlin's world went red.

Blood cascaded down the speedster's pale skin, dripping to the floor. Barry kept his jaw tight, even as Jason repositioned the blade over his heart. As Caitlin looked at him, horrified, he mouthed, "I'm okay."

A lie. Nobody was 'okay' with a knife dragging across their chest, slicing through fabric and flesh as one. The STAR shirt was too dark to show blood, but the way Barry's face contorted told the whole story.

"Shallow cuts, isn't that right?" Jason said. "Or perhaps something deeper?" He suddenly twisted and put pressure on the knife, and Barry finally allowed a cry of pain as the blade sunk into the soft flesh beneath his shoulder.

"Stop, please," Caitlin begged. Again, she locked eyes with Barry, and, despite the sheen of sweat on his face, a knife half-buried below his collar-bone, he shook his head no. The desperation built in Caitlin's gut, the scalding panic of indecision. "What you're asking is unrealistic."

"I'm sure you can come up with something," Jason said, twisting the knife so that Barry was forced to break eye contact with a hiss of agony. "Or do you enjoy watching this?"

He continued twisting, and twisting, and between Barry's screaming and Cisco's shouting and Jason's leering, the assured, confident sections of Caitlin's brain were shorting out spectacularly.

"Maybe I overestimated how much you actually care about your coworkers," Jason said. "Excuse the pun, but shall we…cut to the chase?"

He wrenched the knife out of Barry's shoulder and raised it to his throat.

"A serum," Caitlin blurted out. "There could be a serum to suppress powers."

The blade hovered over Barry's bobbing Adam's apple. "Go on."

"You would have to track down each meta individually," Caitlin stumbled forward blindly, trying to retain as much integrity as she could while presenting a plausible pitch. "And it wouldn't be permanent."

Jason lifted the knife and carved a line down Barry's face: eyebrow, across the nose, down the opposite cheek.

"Anything better?"

"Aerosol," Cisco said quickly from his corner. "We could create another faux accelerator explosion, except release this serum into the air. It would cover the city, but only affect the metahumans."

Jason paused. "Good. Is that possible?"

Cisco swallowed. Nodded slowly. "It should be."

A tight grin pulled across Jason's face. "See? You underestimated yourselves with all of that impossibility nonsense."

The woman stepped forward, stiff. "We'll need to make the serum first. What do we need?"

"I…" Caitlin trailed off, hesitant again to come up with a firm answer because of how theoretical it all was. However, the knife was still close to Barry's bleeding face, so she grasped at whatever straws she could reach. Experimentation. Guesswork. "I can write it down for you. Some chemicals that should work."

"Right, we're not releasing you, if that's what you want," said the woman. "How about you tell us, and we write it down."

Caitlin let out a loud breath through her nose. There was no more time for hesitation. Defeated, she began rattling off names. Chemicals Wells had used in his speed-dampening serum. Elements that had gone into the creation of the Boot. Anything, _anything_ that might be considered useful. The words came out almost without thought, her mind not in it—her mind instead focused on how claustrophobic she now felt.

"Good—see, I knew we could cooperate," Jason said once she had finished. He brought the knife back down to Barry's neck. Caitlin jerked forward, her heart leaping to her throat and choking her scream, but it was the flat part of the blade that pressed against Barry's skin this time. Jason drew it across Barry's throat once, then flipped to the other side, effectively cleaning the blade on his skin. A grisly red smear remained—a bright crimson reminder.

"We'll be back soon," the woman said. "Make yourselves comfortable."

And just like that, they were gone again. One second, terror, the next, a suffocating emptiness. Caitlin waited for the footsteps to disappear, for a door somewhere in the distance to squeal closed. Then she allowed herself to slump. There was silence for a moment.

"I think it looks worse than it is," Barry interjected before Caitlin or Cisco could say a word.

"It looks pretty bad," Cisco said, always the honest one. "Looks like _Psycho_ in real life."

"Yeah, it's a really great combination with the vertigo," Barry said, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes briefly. Despite the aloof exterior, it was clear he was struggling. The shirt masked a lot of the blood loss, though the gash on his arm oozed blood, and more dripped down his other arm from the stab wound in his shoulder. The cut on his face turned practically half of his face crimson, looking exactly like horror movie makeup.

Between the pain, the blood loss, the vertigo, and the threat of his rapid metabolism, Caitlin knew that for once it might actually be worse than it looked.

"That serum," Barry said. "Will it work?"

Caitlin glanced at Cisco, nodded. "Theoretically, it should. It was another idea we were playing around with when developing the Boot."

Barry kept his eyes closed. "You shouldn't have given it to them. I heal quick, remember?"

"You can't heal if you're dead, Barry," Caitlin said firmly. "That man, Jason—he was going to kill you."

"We dunno that," Barry said, his words slurring as he readjusted himself stiffly.

The slash of drying blood on his throat, however, told Caitlin a different story.

"He has a point, though," Cisco said. "Jason, I mean. We're all the best leverage against each other. He's seen it. Not that I want to call friendship a disadvantage, but…"

"I can't watch you get hurt and not do anything about it," Caitlin said, willing Barry to open his eyes. She again looked to Cisco. "Either of you."

"We can't let them go through with this plan, though," Barry said. "We can't be responsible for endangering hundreds of lives if this serum doesn't work."

"Yeah, not to mention the fact that Barry and I are two of the metahumans these people are hell-bent on destroying. We kind of need our powers in order to do our jobs."

"And what if they figure out a way to weaponize it?" Barry added. "I mean _really_ weaponize it, use it to start killing metas?"

"I'm not sure they're that high-tech," Cisco said. "They have old equipment, they're stationed in a musty warehouse, and they need us to do all of the heavy lifting. Not the most advanced criminals in the shed."

"But just as dangerous," Barry mumbled.

"I'm not so sure," Caitlin said in response to Cisco. "The woman seems to have some grasp on things. And something is…off about her."

"I'm pretty sure there's something 'off' about anyone who kidnaps and tortures a bunch of innocent scientists," Cisco rebutted.

On that point, Caitlin couldn't argue.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! And thank you, also, for the amazing feedback on this story so far-keep it coming! You guys rock.**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	4. Chapter 4

**Hello again! Thanks as always for the wonderful, sometimes-panicked responses. They really make my day.**

 **More questionable science ahead. Enjoy!**

* * *

By the time Jason and the woman returned—the end of the second or third hour, by Caitlin's guess—things were moving from bad to worse. Caitlin's fears about Barry's metabolism were coming true. Even though she knew the cuts from the knife were healing, the speedster was still reeling from the meta attack and desperately needed food. Cisco, too, looked paler than Caitlin had ever seen him. She tried not to look at his mangled hand, but it remained an unspoken horror in the midst of every other one.

"That was fast," Cisco spat. "Guess we're not as far out of civilization as you bragged."

"Let's skip all of the small talk," Jason said. "Unless you want to have a little more fun." The knife was still strapped to his belt, and Caitlin knew at once that she had no choice but to comply.

The woman pulled out a few items from a dark bag and set them on the table where she kept her laptop. Caitlin frowned.

"Where did you get all of this?" she asked. "You stole it, didn't you?"

"Don't worry yourself about it," the woman responded, eyeing a vial of fluorescent green liquid before setting it on the table with the rest.

"Are you going to let me out to at least make sure you don't blow yourselves up?" Caitlin said coldly.

"Nice try, darling, but I think you can direct us from right where you're at." The woman gestured. "We'll start out with a sample—and I think we'll be able to work from there to produce enough for your device." She jammed a thumb in Cisco's direction.

"This is incredibly risky, you know," Caitlin warned. "Look at us—we're actual scientists, and the particle accelerator still exploded. On _accident_ ," she emphasized.

"We'll take our chances," the woman said.

"After all," Jason cut in, "if something's wrong with this serum, the worst it can do is kill the metas, right?" He grinned cruelly.

"Why are you so intent on destroying these people?" Cisco said, once more desperate. "Like Cait said, what we did was an accident. It's not their fault that they got these powers. Most are living underground, doing nothing wrong."

"And what about the ones that are doing wrong?" Jason snapped at him. "Your _accident_ destroyed more lives than just those of the metahumans. Your _accident_ created abominations that have unchecked power to cause calamity. Calamity, and death."

A muscle in his mouth twitched. Caitlin narrowed her eyes.

"Something happened to you, didn't it?"

Jason fixed his attention on her. "What are you talking about?"

"I mean, the accelerator explosion affected you personally. That's why you want to destroy metahumans so badly," Caitlin said. "Those scars on your neck are from a metahuman attack."

"Affected me personally?" Jason practically guffawed, and the explosion of sound made Caitlin flinch. "I was minding my own business when that damn machine blew lights sky-high. The metahuman came out of nowhere. Killed my brother right in front of me."

Unbidden, the words _I'm sorry_ rose to Caitlin's tongue, but before she could voice the instinctual words, Cisco cut in. "And you?"

He spoke to the woman, who had finished unpacking the chemicals and was busy poring through the list Caitlin had given her. At Cisco's address, she looked up with a chilling starkness in her eyes.

"He was my fiancé," she said.

Her voice was frigid and emotionless, but Caitlin knew. She _knew_.

"I'm sorry," she managed to whisper this time. Again, she was overpowered.

"The three of us were together when it happened," Jason said. "Out to dinner to celebrate their engagement. Then the explosion happened. Sent a shockwave through the restaurant, blew out all the lights. People were scrambling. I heard her scream, and when I turned to help her I got a faceful of something sharp. Both of us were knocked out, but when we came to, my brother was dead, throat sliced open by thorns."

"Thorns?" Cisco breathed. Caitlin knew what he was thinking: none of them had ever encountered a metahuman with the power to create thorns before.

"It could have been anyone in that restaurant," Jason continued. "Any one of 'em could have been the metahuman that did it. They vanished without a trace."

Cisco was the first to speak. "All of that is horrible." He flexed his right hand. "More than horrible. But you know what I think? I think that this is a chance for you to take that grief and do something good with it."

Jason chewed on this. "You know what I think? I don't think you've ever suffered a loss like we have."

Cisco's mouth opened in a retort—probably the same one that Caitlin and Barry had—but before he could get the words out Jason kicked out roughly at his chair. The blow was just enough to rattle the chair, bounce the front legs from the floor. The action might not have been painful in and of itself, but even the slightest jostle was enough to aggravate Cisco's fingers. He hissed and dropped the conversation.

"I also think that maybe this is your _golden opportunity_ to do something with the options presented to you," Jason said. "Like you said, maybe we have to make the most of the decisions we have. You can choose to help with this serum. Or you can let us muddle our way through and kill all of these people you seem so hell-bent on defending."

Hesitation was no longer an option. And he was right: if Caitlin got this wrong and they still managed to test the serum on a meta, that death would be on her head. So, like before, she took a deep breath and started speaking.

The woman was surprisingly adept about writing everything down, nodding at everything Caitlin threw at her, and Caitlin began to wonder whether she had, in fact, been trained in any sciences. Unlike the football-reject Jason, who looked like he'd never picked up a pencil in his life, this woman appeared to have some semblance of brains. Even the technical demands she seemed unfazed by. But, then again, Caitlin had never seen her so much as crack a frown this entire time.

"Then add three milligrams of that red one," Caitlin finished a few minutes later. She narrowed her eyes. "I don't suppose you have a centrifuge?"

The woman shrugged the dark bag up on her shoulder. "We picked up a few extra things on our shopping trip."

"You'll want to vortex that," Caitlin continued as if she hadn't heard the comment. "Then let it sit in the cooler for five minutes."

"Great," the woman said. "Thanks for the help. I'll get to work."

She nodded to Jason and disappeared.

Caitlin waited for Jason to go as well, longing for more time to converse with her friends, but this day hadn't given her luck yet. Her stomach clenched as Jason pulled out the knife again.

"What will we ever do to pass the time?" he said. "I'm sure you don't know me well enough yet, but I get bored easily. And I'm not quite satisfied."

"You still need us," Caitlin said hurriedly. "If you kill us now you'll never be able to target all of the metas."

Jason entered the circle from behind Barry, crossing toward her. "It seems to me," he said, "that the only person I really need in one piece is him now." He gestured at Cisco. "Besides, I don't need to kill you to have some fun. And look at you—you've gotten away so easily. I'm worried you don't have anything to remember me by."

Finally he was in front of her, kneeling at eye level. Her heart quickened. As if by muscle memory, her bruised cheekbone throbbed.

"Get away from me," Caitlin spat.

"Feisty and smart," he continued. "And too pretty for your own good, wouldn't you say?"

As he lifted the knife to her face, the throb in her heart was almost as painful as that in her cheek.

"What would you say your most beautiful feature is, just for my own reference? Or are you going to make me guess?" The point of the knife dragged across her collarbone, up her neck to her lips, tightly shut now. The blade still showed traces of Barry's blood, she noticed, as it opened up a small cut on her lower lip. "What do you prefer—lips, nose, eyes?" With each guess, the knife tip trailed over the according feature. As it moved to her eyes, she was forced to close them, tensing involuntarily at the feeling of the sharpness sliding over her eyelids.

If she wasn't so terrified of moving, she might have again considered vomiting; the agony of helplessness seized up every muscle in her body. The knife was just tracing down her uninjured cheek, leaving a thin but fiery slice in its wake, when Barry shouted, "If you touch her, I'll rip you apart."

At this, Jason paused. Caitlin opened her eyes, slightly drunk from fear, and saw that he had an amused grin creeping onto his face. He rose, turned to face Barry finally.

"Well, aren't you the great and mighty—"

He froze in his tracks. Caitlin, Barry, and Cisco all froze too, watching, waiting. While Caitlin could no longer see his face, she did see the twitch in his free hand, almost like a nervous tic. She sat, confused, wondering what on earth had caught his attention.

She understood the moment he did.

"The cut on your face," he said dully. "It's gone."

Caitlin's mouth went dry.

"N-no," Barry said quickly. "See all this blood? I don't know what you're thinking. This still hurts—"

But Jason was brandishing the knife in his direction, visibly shaking. "It's healed. How is that possible? It's completely healed."

To the side, Cisco started jerking at his bonds, hurling insults, perhaps in an effort to distract, but it wasn't working. They were done for.

"Speed healing," Jason continued, manic. "You're— _you're_ the Flash."

He started laughing then, still so crazed with either nervousness or excitement that it came out as more of a shriek. Barry, now, began struggling wildly, starting to vibrate as he did when he was anxious, but never fast enough.

"Do you know how…wonderful this is, having an actual metahuman in my grasp?" Jason said. "And the Flash, no less—oh, what absolute delights I had dreamed for you, what absolute hatred."

Finally Barry took hold of just enough. He vibrated hard enough to phase through the zip-ties, if barely. He immediately flung himself forward at Jason, but the vertigo and the energy drain still took their toll. He tumbled forward gracelessly, his punch glancing off ineffectively, and Jason countered easily with a jab at Barry's shoulder. Even though the shallower cuts had healed, it would take longer for a full-blown stab wound, and the direct strike to the injury sent Barry grunting to the floor. Caitlin could only watch the scene unfold, a patron at a film she didn't pay for, her own screams never penetrating the barrier that divided her from the action. Barry crumpled to the floor and, with sickening force, Jason landed his boot twice on the speedster's knee.

A terrible cracking noise filled the space, and Caitlin knew she was screaming, but she didn't know whose screams were whose. Hers and Barry's blended into one another. Neither one of them had any time to recover; Jason reached down, grabbing Barry by the collar and dragging him backward. Barry's struggling had ceased—the speedster looked like he'd finally succumbed to the exhaustion and the fresh pain—but Catlin and Cisco renewed with fervor. Caitlin's throat went raw with shrieks, and she wrenched her wrists trying to slip out of the zip-ties, but to no avail. As usual, the ties held, and, as usual, her pleading amounted to nothing. Her and Cisco's cries were swept up in a vacuum, and Jason continued to drag Barry roughly away, until they were out of sight.

* * *

 **You know how I love my cliffhangers!**

 **Thanks for reading, and, as always, I would love to hear your thoughts. Just a slight update-I am going to be starting a full-time job this week, so posting times may be a little different. We'll still be doing Wednesdays and Sundays, but expect updates a bit later in the day. Thanks for sticking with it!**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	5. Chapter 5

**Heyyy. Is it safe for me to show my face after that last chapter? No? Well...here's more pain before I leave again. Also, I'm glad you're all concerned about dear Barry, but I'm afraid it's going to be a looong while before you see him again.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

Caitlin sagged in her seat, blinking furiously to stay awake. Impossibly, even despite the tension of the situation, the exhaustion was beginning to wear her thin. It had taken a while for the adrenaline from Barry's discovery to wear off, but once it did, she began to feel the intricacies of her condition more acutely. The fresh cut on her cheek stung, but, beyond that, she was starting to notice the intense ache in her wrists. If she'd realized how much damage she was doing by trying to escape the zip-ties, she certainly hadn't cared; now, however, her skin screamed at sprouting bruises and chafing from the hard plastic.

Still, she continued to wiggle her right wrist as she'd been doing since Barry's escape, convinced that it was loose enough to slide her hand through. So far she'd managed to squeeze her entire hand through up to her thumb, but it had been too painful to continue. Besides, she knew that if Jason caught her with her hand out of its bindings, it would be bad news, and there was no way to free her other hand even if she did manage to get the right one loose. She twisted her wrist again, squeezing her eyes shut as she did.

"How long has it been?" Cisco rasped from his corner. "What do you think they're doing to him?"

Caitlin didn't have a satisfying answer to either of those questions, so she stayed quiet. In her mind, she quietly provided her own answers: _Too long. Nothing good_.

"Nobody's coming," Caitlin said. "It's been hours. Even if they come, it'll be too late."

"No," Cisco said. "Don't think like that. You know Joe and Wells will come for us. You know that. They'll save us."

"No," Caitlin echoed. "They're going to get themselves killed. You heard Jason. You heard him, they…"

She trailed off with a whimper, trembling. The room swam in front of her, and she blinked thickly again, too tired for actual tears.

"Hey, hey," Cisco said softly. "It's okay. Hey. Look at me."

Caitlin did, her head heavy. Cisco looked in similar shape to her, close to fading, his whole hand now swollen and his face slick with sweat despite the chill of the warehouse. Though he appeared about ready to pass out, he kept his eyes up, on her, his earnestness evident even at a distance.

"What have we always told Barry?" Cisco said. "What has he taught us? To never give up."

"Barry's probably dead," Caitlin said. "And so are Joe and everyone else, if they try and get into STAR."

"I don't think they're going to kill Barry," Cisco said quietly, almost hesitantly. "As for Joe and Wells and Iris…I think we just have to have a little faith. We have to be strong for them, right? It's our responsibility."

Caitlin looked back to Barry's chair. It remained a haunting presence in the room—the empty corner of their triangle, a physical hole that stung every time she looked at it. Worrying about Barry was standard. Seeing that empty chair where he'd once been, what that empty chair signified, was something else entirely. Not to mention the looming worry for Cisco, for Joe, for Iris, for Wells.

By glancing at Cisco, it was clear he had he same anxieties. However, he kept his gaze determinedly on her, willing her to hold on, even when the woman reappeared in their circle.

"Looks like I missed something," the woman said. She looked over to the empty chair. "Guess that's where the screaming was coming from."

"What are you doing with him?" Cisco snarled. "Where is he?"

"I hear he's the Flash." The woman crossed her arms. "Must be something, being friends with a metahuman like him. I think Jason's having a field day."

Even though she still felt Cisco's plea for bravery on the surface, the fear struck deeper. "Let him go," she said. "Please, he hasn't done anything wrong. We'll help you with this serum, with anything. Just let him go."

The situation felt all too familiar, and she remembered repeating similar words the last time she had been kidnapped like this, spitting in the face of Mick Rory. _Leave him alone_. She knew the pleas, the threats, never amounted to anything, but it was instinct. She would take whatever punishments came her way—irrationally, she might even doom large populations of people—if it meant keeping Barry out of whatever hell he was barreling toward.

"You already have helped with the serum," the woman said. "In fact, I think it's in your best interests that you provided us with a successful serum."

Caitlin swallowed. "What do you mean?"

"Who better to test your effort on than the Flash himself?" the woman said with the touch of a sneer, the most expression Caitlin had seen on her. "I think Jason wanted to get rid of that pesky healing factor."

Though apparently too exhausted to physically struggle any more, Cisco growled in his seat. "So, what? You're just up here to gloat?"

"You could say that," the woman said. "I have some news to share."

"Oh, news?" Cisco said. "Have you finally figured out that you're making the wrong choice here?"

"No, _actual_ news," said the woman. She pulled a phone out of her pocket and clicked it on. She shoved it in Cisco's face first. At once, all of Cisco's jibes were gone. Speechless, he looked at the screen, and, if possible, his face went even paler.

In a way, Caitlin knew what it was before the phone was in front of her. She hadn't realized how much her vision was swimming until she tried to read the headline on the news report. What she did comprehend first was the image, which was undoubtedly STAR Labs. STAR Labs with smoke pouring from the front. At last she focused on the words on screen:

 _Explosion at STAR Labs._

The phone was pulled away before Caitlin could read more in the article, or even see the time. She was so paralyzed she probably wouldn't have comprehended it anyway.

"Looks like our security measures paid off," the woman said. "Whoever else you hire at that place is done for."

Caitlin couldn't bring herself to disagree. All she could do was wonder who it had been.

"Are you happy now?" Cisco said. "You're happy with this violence?"

If Caitlin wasn't mistaken, the woman's mouth twitched downward. "I'm happy that the people who created metahumans are being brought to justice."

"Does this look like justice to you?" Cisco rasped.

"It looks like a fair bit of trickery, if you ask me." All at once, Jason was back, loping back into view like a wild animal. Clutched in his hand was a tire iron, smeared with something dark. Something Caitlin didn't want to think about too much. "You didn't feel like telling us that the Flash was sitting in this room?"

"Jason," the woman cautioned, holding out her hand as if to field his anger. It didn't work.

Cisco cut in. "Given what you've done, you can hardly blame us."

However, Caitlin could see the change in Jason's face. He'd always been terrifying, unstoppable, but now he looked truly unhinged. Rage colored his face, tightened his muscles. In a split second Caitlin comprehended everything at once—she knew that she and Cisco were treading dangerous ground.

"This puts me in a bit of a dilemma," Jason said, twirling the tire iron. "You realize that, right? I don't know what else you are hiding."

"Obviously no more metahumans," Cisco said, which Caitlin thought was a bit daring, given the circumstances. Sure, his powers were easier to conceal and not offensive, but even making a joke about it seemed like putting himself in the line of fire.

Jason realized this too, and he shot Cisco a look. "Oh, really?"

"The Flash was our figurehead," Caitlin said in an attempt to draw attention away from Cisco. "We couldn't…recruit any more metas."

"Is that any surprise?" said the woman. Jason hadn't taken the bait, but she did, sidling closer to Caitlin, almost curious. Caitlin noticed again the small knife tucked into her waistband. "You were the one that created them. And every time one of them shows their face, they're taken down by the Flash."

"We only take down metas who are criminals," Caitlin said.

"Criminals kind of like you," Cisco said.

Jason laughed hollowly, though his face had contorted into a kind of snarl. "Yeah? Well, too bad the Flash isn't here to stop us criminals now."

He took a step toward Cisco. Caitlin eyed the knife in the woman's belt, began to wriggle her hand from its restraint.

"Too bad you need us alive to continue your plan," Cisco countered.

Caitlin saw the look in Jason's eye even at a distance. He needed them alive, but he didn't need them unbroken. Perhaps Cisco saw it too, and perhaps it was fear that lanced through him as Jason advanced. The tire iron swung.

The woman turned to the scene, so Caitlin seized her chance. Shaking so hard she was afraid she might lose her grip, she wrenched her hand the rest of the way from the ties and lurched forward for the woman's knife. Her fingers closed around the smooth handle and she pulled it toward her, going instantly for the other, tighter tie on her left wrist. However, her grip was as weak as she'd feared, and the zip-tie tighter. The knife cut shallowly across her hand as she struggled to get it underneath the plastic, and she hadn't even begun to saw through when the woman recovered enough to apprehend her.

The struggle was brief—still bound to the chair and weak as she was, Caitlin didn't stand a chance as the woman yanked the knife from her hand. The struggle might have ended there, with Caitlin falling back shakily into her seat, but all at once Jason was striding toward her, blocking her field of vision, encompassing her reality.

She knew it was coming, but that didn't make the blow from the tire iron any less painful. Her world burst into chaos, alternating blinding light and black spots. One. Crack to the collarbone. She held up her unbound arm to defend herself. Two. Strike to her raised forearm. White-hot. Noise. Screaming. Hers?

"Stop!" That was Cisco, definitely, somehow breaking through the new acid fog that had descended over Caitlin's consciousness. Her arm alone was striking electricity throughout her entire body, shooting down every thought process that might have kept her rational. "Get away from her!"

Jason didn't. Three. Blow to her jaw. Four. Hit to her ribs.

"STOP!"

Caitlin looked up blearily to Cisco. Cisco strained forward, mouth still open in his cry. Time seemed to slow for an instant, as Barry often described. Jason's arm remained poised in the air for another strike. That he was going to kill her, Caitlin had no doubt. What would happen when she died there, in that unknown warehouse? Would they keep her there, to torment Cisco, as their triumvirate was slowly broken apart? Would the police find the warehouse before Cisco, too, was dead? Would that even be preferable?

All of this, improbably, passed through Caitlin's quickly-deteriorating awareness in an instant.

Then, at the culmination of Cisco's yell, the air pulsed around him.

The pulse came from Cisco's core, a ripple of light and vibration, almost as if part of his soul was pushing itself out from under his skin. It was solid energy, a flicker of color and movement in an otherwise stagnant space. The air was displaced molecule by molecule in a kind of visual cacophony—to Caitlin, it appeared like small waves in a pond, where Cisco was the stone.

It all happened so quickly, Cisco emitting the pulse and the pulse hitting every other person in the room. When the wave struck Caitlin around the middle, it was almost worse than the tire iron. The energy was heavy, solid, and it packed a punch that knocked the wind out of her. Jason and the woman were lifted off of their feet before dropping, just as Caitlin was; her chair's legs left the floor for a heartbeat, and then it was toppling sideways. The ground rushed up to meet her and, without an arm to catch herself, she hit it hard. The chair clanged, and her head cracked on the concrete.

Surprisingly, consciousness didn't wink out in an instant; instead it leaked away slowly. As it did, as color and sound was drained from her reality, she watched Cisco's face go rigid with surprise at what he'd done. She watched Jason stir from where he'd fallen. She watched him rise and move toward Cisco, and she knew she didn't want to watch any more. Blessedly, in that moment, she no longer had to. The world continued its swirl out of existence and, at last, was gone.

* * *

When she woke, it was much the same as before, with consciousness returning slowly, piece by piece. Her head was swooping with dizziness, but someone had taken the time to pull her chair back upright. The wrist that had gotten free was secured with a new zip-tie, this one drawn so tight it cut deep into her skin. For good measure, the other wrist had been pulled tighter as well, and it was a wonder she hadn't lost circulation in both hands yet.

Another glaring discomfort was the excruciating pain in her arm, collarbone, and jaw, but those she would have to deal with later. Once she'd catalogued all of her hurts, she was ready to open her eyes, one of which was so swollen by now it barely opened. When she did manage to pry her eyelids open, the sight before her might have been the same time and circumstance, except for one glaring fact:

Cisco's chair was empty.

* * *

 **And, uh, yeah, that's my cue to hide again.**

 **Thanks for reading, and, as always, I love hearing from you guys, so please leave a comment below!**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	6. Chapter 6

**I'm really sorry about the cliffhangers. (I'm not.)**

 **Additional warning for this chapter: nonconsensual drug use.**

* * *

 _"_ _Caitlin?"_

 _The voice penetrated her consciousness like a blinking light through fog—barely, but enough to be recognizable. She sucked in another shuddering breath and willed the voice away._

 _"_ _Leave me alone."_

 _The air would not reach her lungs; she tried to catalogue the tightness as a doctor might, but she couldn't find that part of herself. Pieces of her soul, of her identity, were scattered throughout the building, blown apart by the explosion. She clung tighter to the front of her shirt, the only thing she could find purchase in._

 _"_ _Hey, hey, it's okay. You're safe. I'm right here. Cait. You're having a panic attack."_

 _A warm hand rested on her back, rubbing slow circles in an attempt to ease her breathing. The musky scent of Cisco's cologne wafted toward her, grounding her. Another breath stuttered._

 _"_ _Easy. Easy."_

 _With Cisco's solidity beside her, she struggled through another painful inhale—fearing suffocation or death, fearing what awaited her if neither of those came._

 _Gradually, the room came back into focus, the STAR logo on the wall taking shape before her eyes. The force of the particle accelerator explosion one week prior had knocked the R off-center, skewing it sideways._

 _"_ _I couldn't find you anywhere," Cisco said. "I was worried something had happened. You weren't answering any of my calls."_

 _Without guilt, Caitlin looked up at her phone, which she'd shoved halfway across the room shortly after collapsing to the floor._

 _"_ _I didn't want you to see this," she said, wiping the tears from her cheeks._

 _"_ _See what?"_

 _"_ _Weakness."_

 _"_ _Cait." Cisco repositioned himself on the floor, removing his hand from her back and sliding on his knees in front of her. "This isn't something any of us are supposed to be strong for, okay? Hey. Eyes on me." He waited patiently for her to look up, to look him in the eyes. "You don't have to be alone in this."_

 _"_ _But I am alone." Caitlin's voice wavered and broke even as she said it. "Everything is broken. Ronnie is…" She bit her lip to stifle a sob, still unable to say the word a week after it had become a reality. "I'm more alone than I've ever been in my life. And I'm terrified of what comes next."_

 _Cisco reached forward, took one of her trembling hands. "Cait, you're not alone. I'm right here. No, look at me." She did again, and saw the same grief, the same uncertainty, but also a burgeoning determination in his eyes. "I'm not going to leave. And whatever the future holds, we can get through it, right? Together."_

 _The words stewed in her consciousness. The sensation of smoke and of dying still lingered in her periphery whenever she opened her eyes. She didn't believe the words, not yet, and wouldn't for a long while, she knew._

 _But she allowed herself to relent somewhat under the pressure of Cisco's resolve, his hope still too strong after all this time to go unheeded. She softened, squeezed his hand back._

 _The change didn't go unnoticed. Cisco managed a tight smile. "That's it. Come on, let's get you something to eat."_

 _She pressed her fingers tighter into his hand as he helped her to her feet—an anchor amidst the storm, amidst the raging world that still threatened to topple her. He pulled her forward gently, and she followed._

* * *

When she opened her eyes, the room careened around her.

 _Don't panic, Caitlin. Don't panic. You're not going to be helping anyone by panicking._

The funny thing was, telling herself not to panic did nothing to actually prevent her from panicking. Her fingers had gone numb, and, while the evidence was pointing convincingly toward it, she knew it wasn't from the tightened zip-ties.

 _Don't panic._

She tensed her muscles and scrunched her eyes shut against a swoop of breathlessness, of nausea, but to no avail. The chill traveled from the pit of her stomach up through her throat, and she gagged over the side of her chair. With nothing in her stomach and no genuine sickness, nothing came up, but she dry-heaved until tears sprang to her eyes. Even after she was done, she allowed the tears to fall, unable to control herself with the intense trembling in her limbs. She had sometimes had concerns that Barry would literally run himself to pieces; now, she felt the same way, as if she might shake herself apart.

 _Don't panic._

Barry's empty chair, and now Cisco's empty chair, captured her attention. The longer she looked at them, the shorter her breaths became, and the more she began to shiver. The warehouse was cold, but sweat gathered at the base of her neck. As much as she didn't want to imagine what was happening to Barry and Cisco, she couldn't help it. She hated imagining Jason with his knife, with his tire iron, with something worse, but at least in those scenarios her friends were still alive.

For how long, was the question. If they died, at least she wouldn't be far behind. With the explosion of STAR labs, plus the unreasonably long time they'd been imprisoned, Caitlin was doubtful anyone would find them in time.

All alone in the warehouse, listening to the echoes of those empty chairs, she allowed the hot tears to slip down her face. The metal chair pressed hard against her spine, and her body shrieked in pain with every breath. Somehow the quiet, the solitude, amplified everything.

She'd gotten used to solitude, in a way. Once upon a time she thought she was done with solitude, when a ring had been on her finger and eternity in her future, but since then she'd gotten used to a productive kind of solitude. A solitude of an empty apartment at night, of independence.

This kind of solitude was different. This one was painful, constricting, depressing. The more the warehouse creaked, the more she was aware of how vast it was, and how little space she occupied within it now that the comfort of her friends was gone.

Though she had the impression she'd been unconscious a while, she was still exhausted, so she allowed herself to drift in and out of uneasy sleep. Her dreams were plagued by an inescapable chill, the kind that threaded its way through her bloodstream. Dreams she couldn't wake up from. Dreams that relinquished their hold whenever they chose, thrusting her back harshly into reality intermittently. Each time she woke, she was forced to re-discover the pain and the fear all over again. She didn't know what was worse: the dreams or the warehouse.

Finally, after what felt like hours, Caitlin awoke to footfalls, each one increasing in volume. She had come to recognize the intense boot stomps of Jason, but these weren't them. The woman with the frizzy hair—which had only gotten unrulier after the night's events—approached Caitlin with arms crossed protectively over her chest. If Caitlin wasn't mistaken, the bags beneath her eyes had deepened since their last interaction.

"Come back to gloat more?" Caitlin said, her voice raspier than she'd realized. On the huge list of concerns, she hadn't even acknowledged thirst until now.

"Good to see you're awake," the woman said emotionlessly. "Thought you might have died from that knock to the head."

"You could see I was awake," Caitlin said, nodding up to the security camera. "It's been hours, right? If you're going to kill me, why not just do it?"

"We were a little preoccupied." The woman continued striding forward toward Caitlin. The words, and the movement, made Caitlin tense up, her breath hitch. "Jason's not happy, you know. Two surprise metahumans on your team. Unexpected, to say the least. It makes a person wonder what other surprises you're not telling us about."

"If they were surprises, obviously you wouldn't know," Caitlin said, but the snark was cut off at the sight of what the woman was holding. "What are you going to do with that?"

The woman uncrossed her arms and held the full syringe into the light. "Like I said, we don't like surprises. And with two surprise metahumans in our little trio…" She looked up curiously at Caitlin. "You can understand why we might be a bit suspicious of the third."

Caitlin's heart skipped a beat. "I'm not a metahuman."

"I bet that's what the others said, too."

"You never asked," Caitlin said, a touch more fiercely than she'd intended. "Listen, you've put me under just as much stress as the others, and…no powers. You think I would keep those to myself after everything we've been through?"

But even as she said the words, she knew the ground was slipping out from beneath her feet. If she had been in the woman's position—which, strike that, she never would be—she would have held the same suspicions. Like she'd said, two out of the three captives had suddenly displayed hidden powers. There was no reason to believe Caitlin wouldn't do the same, given the chance.

"Good thing you developed this serum," the woman said. She finally reached Caitlin's chair and crouched at her uninjured arm, pushing up the gauzy sleeve just enough to expose the crook at Caitlin's elbow. "Assuming you gave us a workable formula and didn't try anything funny, this shouldn't be too much of a problem, now, should it?"

"It's not tested properly," Caitlin said, starting to struggle now, the desperation rising in her throat. Even if it did work on metahumans, there was no saying what it might do to normal people. There likely wouldn't be catastrophic effects, but there was also no way to be sure. These things required experimentation. Safe, confined testing. She heaved herself sideways, but the woman held her arm in place with one hand as she guided the needle toward Caitlin's skin.

"Please," Caitlin said, almost choking on the word.

The woman met her gaze for an instant. Her eyes had gone curiously dark. "Do you see any other way?" she said.

Before Caitlin could formulate a response, the needle pricked her skin, sank into her arm. She gripped the arms of the chair, scrambling for some kind of purchase, but the plunger of the needle sank. Caitlin began to thrash, more desperate than before, but the damage was done; the cold fluid trickled into her bloodstream.

There was no one to hear her, no one to save her, but still she screamed, because it was instinct, because it was her only method of survival now. She couldn't move and she couldn't dispel the serum from her blood, but she could scream. The fluid bubbled through her, at first tingly and numbing like alcohol, then growing sharp like needle pricks. It made its presence known in every cell in her body, and she felt as if millions of icy bubbles were roiling under her skin.

The woman pulled back with the needle, but Caitlin couldn't process it—she was going to be sick, she was going to—going to burst out of her own skin—

A bang, a shout. Caitlin's own scream trailed off into a moan, and she felt the sweat pooling on her upper lip, at her hairline. The commotion came from behind her, but she couldn't bring herself to swivel her head to look. However, soon that was solved for her as the woman grabbed her and spun her chair roughly around. Another crash. The woman's knife, cool against now-feverish skin, pressed to Caitlin's throat.

"Put them down." The woman's voice was like fear, like heat, like moisture. "Put them down, or I kill her."

"You're surrounded," came a strong, rumbling male voice. "Hands in the air!"

Dark shapes advanced from the dark spaces of the warehouse, but the woman only got closer. "Back off!"

Caitlin's body seized tight, and dizziness engulfed her.

"Drop it!"

"I will kill her!"

Caitlin blinked slowly, heavily, against pain too intense to be real.

An echoing crack. A rush of warm liquid against Caitlin's arm. A shrill cry close to her ear. White noise.

Caitlin opened her eyes.

The shadows descended more quickly, most moving further into the darkness, two jogging off to the side where the woman had been, one landing directly in front of Caitlin. It took Caitlin a few more sluggish seconds to discern that what she was seeing was the face of Joe West.

His lips were moving. Gradually the white noise cleared from her ears enough for her to make out the words. "…lin. Caitlin, look at me. You're going to be okay."

Someone was slicing through the zip-ties. Joe's face was going double. "Joe."

"Do you know where the others are?" Joe said, craning his head to keep her gaze. "Barry and Cisco?"

The drug, the adrenaline crash, the exhaustion, was taking its toll. The tension released from Caitlin's body and she went limp, trying to cling to Joe's voice but failing spectacularly. "I don't know," she murmured, wincing at a tremor that passed through her. "I don't know, I don't know…"

"Shh, Caitlin, it's alright," Joe said. He raised a hand and called into the darkness: "We need a medic over here!" When he turned back to her, even in her exhausted state, she could see the worry lines deepening on his face. However, the image dissolved like rust. The detective's hand rose to her face, cupping her cheek. "Hey, look at me. We've got you. You're safe. Stay with me, okay? Caitlin?"

But the words, as with everything else, disintegrated.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! We're about halfway now, and I still can't believe the support this fic is getting! For everyone who is wondering, this is a strict Cait POV story, so it'll have to be up to your imaginations for a bit to decide what is happening to the others :)**

 **As always, reviews are the light of my life. See you Wednesday.**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	7. Chapter 7

**I love all the theories and questions you guys have. It makes this even more fun for me, and it makes me feel even more like an evil mastermind.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

A white ceiling, antiseptic stench, burst into Caitlin's awareness. She gasped and shot up, eyes burning and breath ragged, and nearly blacked out again. Her heart racing, she looked around wildly, trying to comprehend where she was.

A hand rested gently on her arm, warm, non-threatening. "Hey, Cait. It's okay. You're safe."

Beside Caitlin, Iris' face swam into view. A momentary horror blasted through Caitlin's mind: had they taken Iris too?

"Lie back down," Iris said. "Come on, it's alright."

Then Caitlin's surroundings came into focus. Not a warehouse. A clean hospital, with starchy sheets and plasticky pillows, but still soft and safe. She allowed herself to be eased back onto the mattress—thankfully, because she was so weak she wasn't sure she could sit up much longer. Once back on the pillows, her head unclouding somewhat, she took stock of her own body, perhaps because of her doctor instincts. The most noticeable was, of course, the brace on her arm, the IV in the opposite one. When she winced, she felt the pull of bandages on her face as well.

"You're in the hospital," Iris said without prompting. "You've been out for a while, but seems like you needed the rest. They've been working on getting whatever drug that was out of your system, plus rehydrating you."

"A while?" Caitlin said. "How long is 'a while'?" She craned her neck to look at the window. Though the blinds were closed, light streamed in. The sight made her heart stutter, hard to disguise with the active heart monitor. "It's morning?"

"Early afternoon," Iris admitted. "My dad found you around three in the morning."

Early afternoon. It had been almost twenty-four hours since they'd been taken. The heart monitor continued to speed up. She almost didn't dare ask the question but knew she had to. "Barry and Cisco?"

Iris biting her lip was all the answer she needed. "My dad couldn't find them. They must have been transported somewhere else. They're still working on it."

Caitlin's eyes burned, and she squeezed them shut in an effort not to let the tears fall. Along with the accelerating heartbeat, her body was again betraying her by shaking itself to pieces, her breath coming in gasps. Iris threaded her fingers through Caitlin's and squeezed her hand gently. She waited patiently for Caitlin to regain control of her emotion, even looking away as Caitlin reached up to wipe away tears.

"STAR?" Caitlin said, swallowing, again fearing the answer she would receive. "The explosion."

And, again, Iris tensed, though the worry didn't appear to be as sharp. "We're all okay. I mean—we will be okay. It was Harry who got there first."

"Oh, God," Caitlin breathed. "Is he…?"

"He's going to be fine," said Iris quickly. "The explosives these guys rigged up were pretty crude. He's scorched and nursing a concussion, but he's on the mend. At STAR, of course. His being alive would be hard to explain to an actual hospital." She offered a tight smile.

Although it wasn't much, a tiny weight was lifted from Caitlin's chest. "He's going to be okay, though? He's going to be okay?"

"Yes." Iris squeezed her hand again to slow the wave of inconsolable anxiety. "We're safe. We're here."

"Not all of us," Caitlin breathed.

"We're working on that part." Caitlin jumped at the sudden voice from the doorway to the hospital room, but it was only Joe, looking drawn. "Sorry to scare you, I should've knocked."

Caitlin tried to relax, but found that the presence of the detective and everything he signified didn't allow for it. "Any progress on Cisco and Barry?"

"How are you feeling?" Joe asked, sidestepping the question about as nimbly as he shuffled closer to Iris. "Glad to see you awake."

"Joe," Caitlin persisted. "You're not here to bring me good news, are you?"

Joe sighed heavily and sank into an extra chair. "The good news is that you're safe, and recovering. The bad news is that no, we've had no luck with Cisco and Barry. Canton won't crack."

"Canton?" Caitlin asked, creasing her forehead.

"Rose Canton," Joe explained. "The woman who was holding you hostage. We have her in detainment back at the station."

"I thought you shot her."

"In the arm," Joe said. "We need her, especially if she knows where exactly Barry and Cisco and the other kidnapper are."

"Jason," Caitlin said. "His first name is Jason." Her frown deepened. "How did you know it was just one other?"

"When we raided the warehouse we confiscated the security camera and all of its footage. It's okay," he added quickly, holding up a hand when Caitlin made a noise of agitation, "only I have seen it. I figured there might be a chance of visible evidence of Barry and Cisco's powers—lucky I got to it first." His jaw tightened. "Lucky we found you at all, really. We caught them on security footage after they broke into Mercury Labs last night."

"And you can't find where this Jason went?" Iris said.

"It's not like they had an intense security system," Joe said. He took a breath. "Caitlin, I'm sorry to bother you so soon after…" He visibly swallowed. "The quicker I can get your statement, the easier this will be."

"Of course." Caitlin hoped the words sounded less shaky than they felt. "Whenever you need."

"I'm off to another interrogation right now," Joe said. "You need your rest."

"Let me help," Caitlin said. "Let me talk to her."

Joe got to his feet, pushing her back down to the pillow as he did. "No," he said firmly. "I cannot let you get involved in this."

"I'm already involved," Caitlin said. "I was involved from moment one."

"No. Absolutely not." Joe gave her a parting squeeze on the shoulder. "Get some rest. I'll be back soon. With any updates. I promise."

"Joe," Caitlin said, but it was too late. Although he appeared pained, Joe had made up his mind and was already turning his back. The fight was over. The hospital room door closed.

"He's right," Iris said softly. "You should get some sleep. There's nothing you can do now but heal."

After a pause, Caitlin nodded stiffly, angry at the fresh tears slipping down her face. This time she didn't even bother wiping them away, staring fixedly at a spot on the ceiling.

"Do you want me to stay with you?" Iris asked.

In reality, Caitlin hadn't considered that. She supposed she should have been afraid to be alone, ready for comfort, but in reality she was so consumed by everything else that the fear of isolation didn't have room to manifest. Still, logically, she guessed that it might. That's how she was used to thinking. That's how she had to think. Logically.

"I guess," she replied in a monotone. "Did you bring anything to do?"

With her free hand, Iris produced a paperback from her purse. "I'm all set," she said. Her thumb stroked lightly against the back of Caitlin's hand and over her wrist—a wrist marred by ghastly purple and yellow bruises—before pulling away. "I'll be right over here. Try to close your eyes."

She retreated to the windowseat, where there was at least enough light through the blinds that she could squint at her book. The loss of touch, of warmth, was immediately felt.

Caitlin stared at the ceiling for as long as she could keep her eyes open. When they started to inevitably drift close, she rolled stubbornly to her side, fighting the wires that kept her tethered and immobile. In a semi-fetal position, she continued her staring at the far wall. She wouldn't close her eyes. She couldn't.

Eventually, her body's instincts took over, and she began drifting. Intermittently she would be awoken by a nurse passing through, or a chill, which she felt often but was reluctant to fight. As long as she still felt something on the outside, she was reassured about gradually going numb inside. The longer she lay there, hopping in and out of awareness, gazing blankly at the wall, the more her emotions felt dampened.

Logically, she might have guessed it was the shock setting in. But even that, even that gut response to trust facts, was being dampened.

Every waking moment, and every stretch of unconscious time when she could not count the moments, was another that Barry and Cisco went unaccounted for. Each tick of the clock was one where Joe had not called with news, and each tick of the clock was one where Caitlin's imagination wound itself tighter and tighter.

She wrenched her eyes open, stared at the blank walls, and willed herself not to dream worse.

* * *

"How has she been doing?"

It was Joe's voice that drew Caitlin out of her most recent trance. She refocused on the wall, but her muscles were so tight that she didn't move from her position. Instead, she simply listened.

"I don't think she's slept much," Iris whispered back. "Can you blame her? Dad, you have to let her help."

Joe sighed. "She's in shock, Iris. What she went through…it's a lot. I want to give her enough space. And I'm not sure what she would be able to do."

The forceful breath from Iris was audible even across the room. "I hope you're right. You know she wouldn't be able to forgive herself if anything happened to the boys and she wasn't there to help."

The chair creaked, there was a stretch of silence. Apparently the conversation was over. After a few seconds, soft footfalls crossed the room toward Caitlin, approaching from the back. There was a pause, and Caitlin wondered if Joe could see that her eyes were open. A large, warm hand rested lightly on her upper arm.

"Caitlin?" he said softly. "How are you doing?"

She debated not answering, of feigning sleep, or, worse, continuing to stare with her lips sealed. But in the end her need for information won out.

"Have you learned anything new?" She cut straight to the chase. Joe knew how she was doing.

"Not much," Joe said. "We're having trouble breaking her. All she's given us is the fact that she hates metahumans. And where she was the night of the particle accelerator explosion."

"With Jason and his brother, her fiancé," Caitlin said matter-of-factly. "They were attacked by a new meta and her fiancé was killed." Finally she rolled to her back to confront Joe face to face. "I've talked to this woman. I've spent time with her. You have to let me see her."

Joe hesitated. "I don't think it's a good idea."

"When has anything we've done been a good idea?" Caitlin levered herself up on her elbows and looked him straight in the eye. "Joe, please."

She didn't know what she was channeling—the spirit of a daughter, or of an equal—but whatever it was, it softened Joe's features. His eyelids fluttered closed as he took a few more seconds to consider, but Caitlin could see that she'd won.

"Okay," he said finally. "Tell you what. Iris will work on getting you discharged. It should only take an hour or so. In the meantime, I'll go back to the station to explain the situation. I'll meet you there."

"Here's a new plan," Caitlin said. Spurred into action, she reached across and peeled away the tape on her arm. "I go with you to the station right now." Hardly a wince accompanied the removal of her IV. She let the line dangle and swung her legs off of the bed.

As she stepped into a pair of slippers, she didn't miss the glance between Joe and Iris. Iris stood from her windowseat. "I'll take care of it."

Caitlin was too busy steadying herself to pay much attention to the muted conversation that followed, even with the nurse that came bustling into the room asking questions. Joe handled him while Caitlin mastered her balance and trembling legs and started making her way to the door. Eventually, somehow, Joe managed to pass the nurse off to Iris and joined Caitlin, guiding her with a hand on her elbow.

"Nothing I say is going to slow you down, is it?" he said quietly as she dodged curious looks from hospital staff and patients alike.

"No." The sooner Joe accepted that, she reasoned, the better it would be for both of them.

Once in the car, the plan formulating in Caitlin's mind gained solidity. The engine rumbled to life, and she curled her hand around the leather seat.

"Can we stop at STAR on the way?" she asked.

The car peeled out of the lot, daylight streaming into Caitlin's eyes. "Of course," Joe said. "It's on the way. Want to pick up some extra clothes there?"

For the first time Caitlin became fully cognizant of the fact that she was still in her hospital gown. However, she shook her head.

"There's just something I need to get there."

Thankfully, he didn't press further. He allowed the car to be steeped in silence, allowed Caitlin to drift into that liminal space where her thoughts grew fuzzy. Though she stared out the window, her gaze was unfocused.

When they finally pulled into the STAR parking lot, Caitlin unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the door before Joe had the chance to cut the engine.

"I'll be right back," she said. "I'll only be a minute."

Again, she didn't wait for him to protest. She slammed the door shut and shuffled, slippers and all, toward the door.

The air still smelled like smoke, like char, even if there was no evidence of it from outside the building. One she crossed the threshold into the building, though, there was a different story on display. At the main doors were clearly scorch marks, one of the walls pockmarked by the aftermath of an explosion. The floor was clearly grainy with dust and residue. She wondered where Wells was—how he'd ever convinced everyone to leave him alone and injured in STAR Labs after what had happened.

Well, they had other problems, she supposed. They needed every help they could get. And Caitlin wasn't going to let her own skills go to waste.

Once in the cortex, Caitlin moved to the tiny lab where she kept supplies. The effort not to look too hard at her workspace was deliberate—yellow evidence markers littered the floor, by her fallen papers, by Cisco's half-eaten chocolate bar, by the shattered phone. She clattered around in a few of the drawers before finding exactly what she was looking for. With surprising speed and steadiness, she set up the two vials and sucked up a sample of each into two syringes.

"Snow?"

The suddenness of the scratchy voice wasn't even enough to make Caitlin jump now. She merely finished collecting her samples and looked up at her own pace. "Good to see you're doing okay." It wasn't a lie. Though burns streaked down the side of Wells' face, he looked remarkably normal, cool.

"And good to see you alive," Wells responded. "Ms. West at least informed me that you'd been rescued. She didn't tell me you were well enough to be discharged."

She felt his pointed gaze on her hospital gown. "If you ask me, you probably shouldn't be up and about either."

"Any luck with Mr. Allen and Mr. Ramon?" Wells said, apparently nonplussed.

Caitlin emerged from the room, clutching the two syringes. Wells' eyes immediately went to them. "We're working on it."

She brushed past Wells. However, he stopped her with a hand to the arm. "Snow. Don't do anything you'll regret later."

The motion, and the words, were the final snapping point within her. She wrenched her arm away viciously, and her voice dropped in pitch just as her disposition dropped in temperature. "I just spent hours— _hours_ —held captive in an empty warehouse watching my best friends get tortured in front of me. They are _still_ there, and the longer we wait, the slimmer their chances of surviving are. So, no, I'm not going to do anything I will _regret_ , and if I do, do you really think I'll give a damn if it means my friends are alive?"

Wells stood, mouth drawn tight in a thin line. The burns on his face glistened. He didn't say a word. Caitlin waited for him to break the gaze, which he did; then she turned on her heel and strode from the room.

"You good?" Joe said as she re-entered the car, the syringes hidden in the folds of her hospital gown.

"Fine. Just drive," Caitlin responded. Perhaps he sensed the iciness in her voice, because he did. No questions asked.

* * *

 **If you couldn't tell already, I really love Cait, and this is primarily a story about her, so I hope you're ready to dive into this second half of the fic-the rescue attempt. Come explore moral gray areas with me. It'll be great.**

 **Thanks for reading. You know the drill. Y'all are great.**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	8. Chapter 8

**It's a bit of a shorter chapter-but (hopefully you'll agree) not short of substance. Some elements of the interrogation are inspired by _Agent Carter_ episode 2x04 (which actually partially inspired the entire fic), with obvious tweaks, but if anything feels familiar, that's probably why.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

The police station was cold, but not as cold as the warehouse. Caitlin kept that particular chill encased inside of her as a remembrance, as strength.

"I'm pulling a lot of strings here," Joe said. He ushered her down the hall as quickly as he could to evade the gawkers who were not used to seeing women in hospital gowns walking through the police station. "I'll still be outside the interrogation room, but only me. You understand?"

"I won't need long," Caitlin said. "Just let me do what I need to do."

She didn't have time to check for Joe's dubious expression or faltering step. Though she didn't know exactly where the interrogation rooms were, she barreled purposely forward. All hurt in her body was forgotten. She was outside herself with singular determination.

When they reached the interrogation block, though, he finally did stop her one last time.

"Be careful," he said. There was nothing to indicate that he had seen her hidden syringes, but Caitlin felt a flash of guilt anyway at the fear in his voice. "Just because she can't physically hurt you anymore doesn't mean she isn't dangerous. She has leverage. She has emotional power over you."

"I'll be careful," Caitlin said hollowly. Before Joe could give her a hug or something else so irrational, she turned toward the one-way glass behind which the woman sat, steeled herself, and pushed through the door.

The woman initially didn't look up, but when Caitlin planted herself across the table from her, she raised her head slowly.

"You here to beg again?" she said, looking haggard and tired and slightly afraid, a mirror to Caitlin, but with a touch of smugness. "Here to beg for the lives of your friends?"

"No, I'm done begging." Caitlin slammed the syringes down on the metal table, out of sight from Joe at the window, but in full view of the woman. "Rosie Canton, right?"

"Rose," said the woman coldly.

"I don't really care," Caitlin shot back. "All I care about is you giving me the information that I need."

"You cut a real intimidating figure in that hospital gown," Canton said. "The bruises are an improvement, though, I must say."

"I don't even care how I get that information," Caitlin continued smoothly, as if she hadn't been interrupted. "All I need is a location. Just a location."

"I'm not scared of you."

"You should be."

Canton sneered, and Caitlin seized her opportunity. Still blocking the window, she grasped one of Canton's arms, which were handcuffed to the table, and twisted it to expose the veins. Then she lined up the syringe, slid it under the skin, and released the contents into Canton's bloodstream.

"You needed me because I was a biochemist, correct?" Caitlin said, as Canton jerked her arm away, too late. "You should feel this soon. Depending on your metabolism, I'd give it a minute or so. Maybe less."

"So you're going to kill me?" Canton spat, her fingers curling and uncurling.

"Oh, eventually this will," Caitlin said. "But not before the unbelievable pain kicks in. Imagine fire coursing through your veins. For an hour. An hour of agony before you actually die. And the only thing that will quench that fire is this." She held up the second syringe, filled with a clear liquid that might have been water.

"I've experienced pain," Canton said, though Caitlin didn't miss how much she had blanched. "This isn't going to change anything."

"Try telling me that when this has kicked in." Caitlin forced a hollow smile as Canton tensed. "Oh, do you feel it already? That was faster than even I anticipated."

She watched, with a kind of detached smugness, the woman clenching her fists and this time holding the tension. Canton's face creased.

"You wouldn't let me die," she said. "You're one of the good guys, right?"

Caitlin shrugged. "Seems like you were pretty keen on letting us die. I'm simply returning the favor. And offering you the same choice to save your own life."

The moment of change was visible; Canton's face contorted grotesquely and she let out an unrestrained whine. It was clear that the poison had exploded in full. With a wheeze, Canton doubled over as much as she could with her arms attached to the table.

"Maybe you're not...as _good_ as you think you are," she said.

"I thought that was your whole premise," Caitlin said coldly. "Us scientists at STAR Labs aren't good guys at all. We're monsters."

"Aren't people who create monsters...monsters themselves?" Canton said. She lifted her head with visible effort, sweat beading on her forehead.

"Metahumans aren't monsters," Caitlin snarled, leaning close. "Just because your fiancé was killed by one—"

"I don't have the right to say those things, is that it?" Canton shot back. "No big deal, I _only_ watched my fiancé die—"

"Watched?" Caitlin, even in the furor of it, paused. "You said—you and Jason were knocked out by the meta."

"—by a freak," continued Canton without pause. "You've seen them. The freaks don't have control. They're dangerous."

She was struggling with the promised fire in her veins, sweating bullets now, jerking futilely at the handcuffs as if that might help assuage the pain. Any second Joe might sense that something was a bit too fishy and step in. If he came in and assessed the situation, he might immediately administer the antidote without question, and then Caitlin's one piece of leverage would be gone. There wasn't a lot of time.

However, she couldn't shake the creeping doubt that came along with Canton's slip-up. Coming down slightly from the high of her fervor, she creased her brow.

"What do you know about the meta that attacked you?" she asked.

But Canton froze, a horrified realization crossing her face, before resuming her agonized struggle in full. "You have to let me out of here. You have to release me."

Caitlin actually guffawed, although the change in Canton's disposition was unsettling. "Maybe when hell freezes over," she said. "Answer the question, or give up the location."

" _Get me out_!" Canton screamed, and once again Caitlin slammed her hands flat on the table.

"Answer the question!" she shouted with equal intensity. "What do you know about the meta who attacked you?"

Canton thrashed, her nails squealing on the metal surface of the table. "The meta didn't attack me!"

Caitlin blinked. "What?"

One more jerk, one more throaty cry. When Canton looked up next, she had the appearance of a cornered animal: terrified, rigid, but deeply, deeply savage.

"I am the meta."

Caitlin barely had time to register what was happening and duck as thorns the size of pocketknife blades protruded from Canton's fingernails and exploded outward.

Caitlin's knees hit the floor with bruising force. All of the air was sucked from her body as a new, sharp pain sluiced through her arm. Her hand came away bloody: buried deep in the soft flesh of her upper arm, inches above her brace, was a huge black thorn.

A chunk of plaster sailed past her cheek. Crouched below the table, breathless, she chanced a look backward. The other four thorns had buried themselves in the wall just feet from her. There was another screech from Canton, a shattering of glass—more thorns had burst outward and collided with the one-way mirror. As glass rained down among more of the grisly black thorns, Caitlin herself screamed.

The door banged open, and the fiery warmth of Joe's presence enveloped the space. The table rattled, more thorns cut through the air, and the antidote syringe dropped to the floor. Miraculously, it didn't shatter on impact, so Caitlin dove for it.

"Joe!" she said. "We need to give this to her!"

She rolled the syringe to him, too on-edge to even try standing. Without question, Joe scooped up the cylinder and bounded across the room to Canton, who sounded like she was thrashing violently again. The chaos was interrupted, or perhaps expounded upon, by her unusually-throaty "Don't touch me!"

In the din, she almost sounded like a different person. Caitlin started crawling for the door, throwing a hand over her head uselessly as thorns again barraged the wall, but by the grunt that followed, it was clear that Joe had managed to administer the antidote. The inhuman sounds persisted, and more glass rained down from the mirror, and the room was stormed by two more police officers who had heard the commotion. They brandished a familiar-looking weapon, ironically one of Cisco's own design.

As they fired off the Boot, Joe circled back around and picked the bleeding Caitlin up off the floor by her good arm. She was so weak from shock that she didn't protest; she allowed herself to be ushered out of the room without a word, the sounds of chaos still trailing after her.

* * *

 **Ayo! Thanks for reading!**

 **So, now that the cat's out of the bag, I can finally tell you that, like my story _When the Bough Breaks_ , I am using a (VERY LOOSE) interpretation of an existing character from the comics. So, slight disclaimer there. I am, however, using her for my own purposes and fitting her into the world/narrative. All will be explained!**

 **As always, please consider leaving a comment on your way out. See you Wednesday.**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	9. Chapter 9

**Yay, I'm glad (most of) you were surprised at the twist! All of the effort not naming Canton until now has paid off...although, honestly, would anyone have recognized the name anyway?**

 **Also, I'm happy that you are taking to morally-ambiguous Caitlin. Like I've been saying, this is a story about her, so these questionable decisions are going to continue being asked until the very end. Gray areas. Let's explore them.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

"She's a _metahuman_?"

Caitlin nodded mutely, sliding the STAR t-shirt over her head gingerly. The ordeal at the station had done nothing to assuage the aches in her body, and, especially with the adrenaline crash, she felt every single movement. With some difficulty she threaded the arm with the cast and new bandage through the sleeve and collapsed back on the exam bed. It had taken an inordinate amount of effort to get the STAR sweats and shirt on, but she demanded them over any of her regular clothes. For one thing, she didn't want to waste any time going back to her apartment for her normal wardrobe; for another, she felt almost as if the STAR clothes were battle armor. They bore her allegiance proudly. A resilient allegiance. One that had grown even stronger underneath its attacks.

"Wow." Iris whistled from the doorway to the med bay, where she'd been leaning against the doorframe in case of emergency—aka, Caitlin getting stuck in her clothes. "But I thought she wanted to destroy metahumans? Didn't you say she was creating some sort of serum to knock out the meta population?"

"Mm." Caitlin pinched the bridge of her nose, which was a mistake, given that her nose was cut and her eye swollen. It seemed there wasn't a square inch on her body that she could safely touch. Instead, she released the tension by sighing. "Once Wells and your dad get her set up in the pipeline, I'll go down and talk to her some more. With a thick wall of glass between us."

After getting Caitlin to a safe distance and calling Iris once again for a ride service, Joe had somehow managed to convince the chief to transport Canton to a "special metahuman holding facility" for observation. A fancy name for the pipeline, Caitlin mused. She supposed she should be more thankful to Joe for all of the strings he had pulled.

Iris must have noticed the way Caitlin's fingers were curling and uncurling unconsciously around the edge of the bed, because she crossed the length of the small room to sit down beside her. "Hey," she said, putting an arm around Caitlin's shoulders gently. "We're doing everything we can."

"It's not enough." Her determination to get the truth out of Canton, and the desperation that had followed, had temporarily erased her unwanted thoughts of Barry and Cisco. Now the images, the imaginations, crept back like lengthening shadows. "It won't be enough until they're safe. We've already lost so much time." She feared for that time. The time she'd lost getting a thorn dug out of her arm. The time she'd lost in car rides and red tape.

"I know." Iris rested her head on Caitlin's shoulder, and Caitlin didn't have the heart to tell her that it was right above her bruised collarbone. She'd always known Iris to radiate warmth, both physically and emotionally, but she didn't get any of that now. The longer the silence stretched, the more noticeable Iris' trembling became. "It was bad, what these people were doing to them, wasn't it?"

Caitlin tensed, saw the knife and heard the snapping of bone in her mind. "Yes."

"Of course it was," Iris said, picking herself up off of Caitlin's now-damp shoulder and returning her hands self-consciously to her lap, fidgeting. "Look at you. It must have been horrible—I can't even imagine what you're feeling. I don't know why I'm the one crying. I have no right."

"Of course you have the right." And, despite the flaring pains in her arm and chest and everywhere else, she gathered up Iris again and pulled her close. Iris' sniffs were more pronounced now, and, as Caitlin buried her face in Iris' hair, she felt the same emotions bubbling up inside of her. She squeezed her eyes closed and shoved the emotion down, burying it. She would not allow herself the luxury of crying. She would not allow herself to unravel.

Joe found them like that five minutes later—huddled close, emotion both simmering and bubbling over. Caitlin lifted her head at his entrance, feeling herself slip back into the stony grooves of single-minded purpose.

"Is she settled?" Caitlin asked. She slipped off the edge of the bed as Iris extracted herself.

Joe nodded. "The Boot seemed to calm her down. She went into the pipeline without a fuss." He crossed his arms. "You had no idea that she was a metahuman?"

"Oh, I did, I just kept that particular piece of information to myself," Caitlin deadpanned, mirroring the arm cross. "She divulged that information right before interrogating me about the best way to destroy metahumans."

"Okay, okay." Joe raised his hands in surrender. "Maybe she didn't know herself. Maybe that stunt you pulled with the poison somehow triggered it."

Though he was still mostly handing her with kid gloves, the accusatory barb didn't go unnoticed. "Maybe. I assume you're going to let me ask her about it?"

"I shouldn't, given what you did the last time I let you talk to her," Joe said.

"But?"

Joe let out a dramatic groan and rubbed at his eyes. "Jesus, Caitlin. Hell if you both don't deserve it."

"Thanks." Caitlin joined him in the doorway, pulling back her greasy, tangled hair into a ponytail.

"Want me to come with you?"

The offer for protection was tempting, but she'd been thinking it over too long. She shook her head. "No. I need to talk to her alone."

In her mind she could practically hear Joe's unspoken _that's what you said last time_ , but thankfully he relented. Though she had a feeling Canton would have something to say even with a detective around, she felt that being alone might be better for both of them.

Joe resorted to staying up in the cortex with Iris, the security feed from the pipeline set up in front of him in case of emergency. He could see and hear, but not interact. Even though she knew he was watching, Caitlin felt a comforting kind of solitude in her walk down to the bowels of the building. It was silent, empty, devoid of life. Even with Caitlin there, it was devoid.

The pipeline rumbled, the ground trembled. Then the door squealed open.

For a long while, Caitlin and Canton stared at each other through the glass. No words could penetrate the barrier between them—the physical one, and the unspoken. Canton looked more like a zombie than a person, but not nightmarish. Broken. Pitiable. The Boot had latched itself around her arm above the existing gunshot wound, which was evident by the dark bruise on her pale skin. The mirror to Caitlin's own new wound didn't go unnoticed.

Although Canton looked as though she might breach that unspoken barrier, Caitlin was the one to give in.

"Obviously I have a lot of questions," she said. "Is there somewhere you would like to start?"

Canton swallowed. "I didn't mean for that to happen. For _her_ to come out."

Frowning, Caitlin asked, "Her?"

There was total silence, an intake of breath. Canton looked as though she might not answer again, just for a split second. It was in the eyes. The way they were cast downward. Ashamed.

Then, miraculously, she spoke.

"All my life, I've had these dreams about…about a woman. Like an imaginary friend. She would show up and talk to me, encourage me to do…horrible things." Canton fidgeted. "Sorry, this isn't making sense. She was part of me, in a way. She wasn't just a dream woman. Sometimes those dreams would stick with me, all through the day, and it would be like…she was speaking to me. To everyone around me, she was just my invisible, imaginary friend. I became convinced that she was the dark part of my conscience. I think that's what she started out as. That voice that encourages you to be reckless. To invoke danger. Just…amplified. Someone I could put a face to."

Briefly Caitlin thought of Eliza and her V9-induced counterpart, Trajectory. Though her nod probably didn't convey such depth, she understood.

"Eventually I learned to stop talking about her. It was simpler that way," Canton continued. "She became almost like a ghost in my dreams, showing up every few weeks, talking about people I hated, fights I'd had. Her bloodlust. She talked about that a lot."

Caitlin waited patiently for her continue, but as the seconds ticked by, Canton's mouth might as well have been fused closed. Finally she prodded, "So?"

"So the dark matter from your particle accelerator hit me and Jason and my fiancé," Canton said, for the first time sounding bitter. "I was the only one affected, as far as I know. I lost consciousness. When I woke up, Jason was unconscious, my fiancé was dead, and I had blood on my hands."

Her fingers flexed, and Caitlin frowned. "The dark matter gave you the ability to produce thorns. They're what killed your fiancé."

"Oh, the thorns are what ended his life," Canton said. "But _Thorn_ is the one who killed him."

"Thorn?"

"The name she took for herself, my little alter-ego." Canton's lips twitched downward in disgust. "See, the particle accelerator didn't just give me thorns. It gave consciousness to the woman from my dreams. My dark side. My raw bloodlust. She took over my mind, killed the first person she saw."

"But she's not in your mind now," Caitlin said, brow still furrowed.

"Oh, she's always in my mind," Canton said with a hollow laugh. "Over the past year and a half I've learned to deal with her, keep her at bay. She comes out occasionally, when I lose control, but I've done my best to keep her contained."

Everything clicked in Caitlin's brain at once. "That's why you want revenge on STAR. That's why you want the metahuman cure. Because this Thorn killed your fiancé."

"Because Thorn is dangerous," Canton corrected. "Revenge on STAR was mostly Jason's plan, but it was the only way I could see to obtain that serum to obliterate this monster in me. All monsters. You may not believe me, but violence is…" She paused. "It's not something that sits right with me."

"You'd understand why I have a hard time believing that," Caitlin said, allowing the chill to come back into her voice. "You certainly had no qualms about torturing me and my friends."

"If I don't get a cure, I have the potential to kill hundreds of other people. I have no control over that. This was the only way," Canton countered firmly. "I couldn't tell Jason what I was, or he would've killed me too. He's hell-bent on destroying metahumans. Things may have gotten out of hand in that warehouse, but losing someone you love will do that."

Caitlin steeled herself for a retort, the words _don't lecture me about losing loved ones_ already on her tongue, but she caught herself before the explosion. Took a breath. Eased herself down, inch by inch.

"My friends are still with Jason," she said. "They don't deserve what is happening to them."

"They're metahumans," Canton said, the words like rote. "You've seen me. You've seen the dozens of others like me. How can you tell me that the world isn't better off without us?"

Another breath. The reminder of wasted time still ticked in the background of Caitlin's mind, but she purposely muted it. She crouched down with some difficulty, getting on Canton's level, forcing the woman to make eye contact with her.

"This is going to be hard to explain," Caitlin began, "but bear with me. I've had similar temptations—the temptations to give into darkness, that is. I've lost people, _good_ people. My own husband, in fact." Canton bit her lip. "I'm not a metahuman, but I know that all of this pain, all of this darkness, would have the potential to bring me to the place where you are now. I've had the opportunity to see what I could become, and it's destructive."

Well, she hadn't exactly _seen_ Killer Frost, per se, but Cisco had painted a decent enough picture. She suppressed the shudder that threatened to give her away.

"That would be the easy way out," she continued. "To let that darkness win. To give up fighting for the light. So many people choose the easy way—they think these powers are the sum of their being, their ticket to power—but you don't have to. You can choose to be better, to fight. You don't have to let this shape who you really are. It starts now." Caitlin leaned closer to the glass, on her knees now. "Don't give Thorn more influence than she deserves. That's a power you have, right now. Help me save my friends. Please."

This was the last shot, and Caitlin knew it. She held her breath, unwilling to think of what might happen if Canton still refused to speak, unwilling to slip back into that unbearable despair. The volume of the ticking clock grew. If she didn't get the location from Canton now, she could see the endless days that would follow. She could see emptiness, and pale faces, and blood, and ice.

"It's a secret basement."

At first, the words didn't register. Then, a spark of realization. Canton continued:

"It doesn't show up on any of the building plans. We constructed it ourselves. It's hidden. No wonder the cops haven't found it yet."

"They're still in the warehouse," Caitlin said in disbelief. "They never left."

"In the southeast corner there's a large shipping crate with a red label. It's empty. It's covering a trapdoor leading down. They'll be down there."

Caitlin's mouth went dry and she stood up abruptly. She knew Joe had heard the entire thing and was probably already preparing to leave, and she couldn't let him do that without her. There was no way she was leaving anything else out of her control.

"Thank you," she remembered to say, spinning back around at the last minute. "Thank you so much. I'll be back soon."

Canton's eyes flashed with something—something akin to pity. "You're going to be late," she said. "With them as metahumans, and with me captured…Jason will have destroyed them."

It wasn't a threat, it was a genuine statement, which is what made it frightening. Caitlin nodded. "Then we'll just have to put them back together again."

She turned and ran, the clock blaring in her ears.

Up in the cortex, Joe was indeed already buttoning up his jacket. "I'm not going to talk you out of coming with, am I?" he asked.

Caitlin grabbed a hoodie from a chair. It was cold outside, after all. "Not a chance."

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! We're getting close! Rescue attempts!**

 **Please leave a comment on your way out. I appreciate you so much!**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	10. Chapter 10

***sweats nervously about these last three chapters***

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

Caitlin and Joe met the rest of the rescue team at the station—a necessary stop, to be sure, but one that still made Caitlin fidget. If given the chance, she was certain she could dismember Jason single-handedly. The two extra cops felt like accessories.

Then they were on the road, in their separate cars once again, but even though Caitlin and Joe were alone in Joe's car, they didn't feel the need to talk. Caitlin didn't ask if he was as scared as she was.

It struck Caitlin, as they pulled up to the warehouse, that this was the first time she was seeing it from the outside. Even under cover of night, it didn't look nearly as intimidating as it should have. In her mind, it was decrepit, spray-painted, leaking shadows; in person, it was nothing short of ordinary. Unfitting for the circumstance.

Once parked, Caitlin exited the car with purpose and moved toward the other cops, but before she could make it three steps, Joe stopped her.

"Cait, hold up." He drew something from his jacket and pressed it into Caitlin's palm. "We're entering a volatile situation. I can't stop you from going in there, but I won't let you do it without protection."

The gun was cool in Caitlin's hand. She closed her fist around it without comment and tucked it down by her side.

The darkness pressed tight around them; it almost seemed as if their silence in approaching the warehouse was in fear of disturbing that sanctity. Though Caitlin hadn't bothered to keep track of time, it must've been nearing midnight. Which meant it had been a full day since Caitlin had been rescued, and almost two days since they'd been captured. It seemed like longer. It was also too long.

"Our suspect is a six-foot white male, muscular, scars along the jawline" Joe said once they were at the entrance to the warehouse. "Our main objective is to extract Barry and Cisco safely."

The two cops nodded. It had never occurred to Caitlin that these people had some semblance of personal investment in this rescue; they knew both Barry and Cisco from the police station. The thought comforted Caitlin somewhat, reassured her.

"Let's go."

The door to the warehouse was still open on its hinges, the place laced with crime scene tape. Stepping over the threshold instantly thrust Caitlin back into the previous night, the memories like charcoal on her tongue. The broken zip-ties, the bloodstains on the floor, the blacked-out windows—Caitlin wanted to avert her eyes, but she was oddly drawn to it.

Joe must have noticed the falter in her step as they passed the scene, because he chanced a look her way. "No one will blame you for waiting behind."

"No," Caitlin said, fixated on the chair she'd once sat in. "I'm fine."

"Not fine, but strong," Joe corrected. He motioned forward. "Alright, let's go."

They continued through the warehouse, past the open space Caitlin had known and deeper into the bowels of the building. The shadows were longer here, in the crevices between tall shelves and stacks of boxes. It was a maze, made up of more darkness than anything else. Caitlin followed Joe blindly, only half-aware of which direction they were going at any one moment.

Finally, after minutes of treading softly across the concrete, they reached a section of the warehouse where various-sized crates were stacked and strewn across the floor.

"There," Caitlin said, pointing. "The red label."

Most of the crates around them bore laminated yellow labels, marking shipping or content information, but one crate, lying on its side near the wall, was emblazoned with a red one. The distinction might not have seemed notable to any observer, but now it stood out to Caitlin like a beacon.

Without a word, the two cops approached the crate from either side. They looked to Joe, who nodded. At this signal, the cops grasped the crate, braced themselves, and hauled it aside. Sure enough, as the crate was pushed sideways with a squeal, a trapdoor was revealed in the floor. The two cops drew their guns again. One kicked downward. The trapdoor burst open, swinging down into darkness.

They moved immediately toward the ladder that led down, but Caitlin froze. For the first time, the paralyzing fear cut deep; the immediacy of what they were about to do struck her in full force. The terror of what they might find. Every synapse in her body fired at once, rendering her immobile, her mind on a singular track that she couldn't pin down or control.

But Joe was next down the trapdoor, and she knew that what she was facing was inevitable. Choking on anxiety, she forced one leg forward, then the other, then again. She crouched, lowered herself onto the ladder, and descended into the abyss.

The drop was shorter than she expected. She had only taken a few steps down the ladder when her feet hit solid ground. She got her bearings and adjusted to the new darkness. Ahead of her, down what appeared to be a crudely-constructed tunnel, the cops had turned on their flashlights. She followed, the gun slack by her side, shielded as she was by the trained men and woman in front of her.

They proceeded down the corridor single file, as it was only wide enough to accommodate one person at a time. In front of them, a dim light bloomed brighter and brighter, and eventually Caitlin realized that it was a light from an area around a bend. Again, Caitlin wondered what might lie in wait for them there. Their entrance had been loud enough—the boom from forcing open the trapdoor had surely echoed to wherever Jason was hiding.

They rounded the corner slowly, cautiously. The cops and Joe fanned out into the wider area the tunnel led to, and as they did Caitlin lifted her gun higher. She'd gone once before with Iris to the shooting range, so she knew the basic principles of operating it, but she didn't quite have the confidence of the cops' stance, their readiness.

The room they had entered was less of a room and more of a damp, hollowed-out place with oddly-shaped walls and crevices that might have led to deeper spaces. An electric lantern—reminiscent of the one that had lit up their circle on the main floor of the warehouse—hung from the ceiling, but its light only illuminated so much. With invasive walls and shadowy corners outside the circle of light, it seemed there were more hiding places than there was open territory.

The cops' flashlights searched the area, landing on piles of assorted objects scattered throughout the space. Canton's laptop computer and a tangle of cords. A pile of tools, some likely taken from the warehouse itself. A table cluttered with science equipment, including a series of labeled flasks and a centrifuge—the haul they had stolen from Mercury Labs.

"Fan out," Joe said quietly. "They've got to be here somewhere."

Just as he said it, the flashlights landed on another pile at the opposite end of the space, in the shadow of one of the larger cutouts in the wall. The small bundle was moving, if only slightly, and Caitlin recognized the STAR logo at once.

"It's them," she said far too loudly, her heart leaping to her throat. "They're over there!"

The cops made an immediate move in that direction, but at the same moment Caitlin felt a rush of air behind her. She turned just in time to see a figure bolting for the main tunnel entrance—Jason had been hiding just around the corner from where Caitlin stood.

"Hey!" she shouted, perhaps more for the cops' benefit than for Jason's, but she didn't wait for the cops to act. Gut instinct drove her forward, into the tunnel, after Jason.

Her legs carried her surprisingly fast, and in only a few strides she had caught up with him. She launched herself at him with the weight of her entire body, the gun forgotten. It wouldn't have been very reliable to her anyway; they'd reached the bend in the tunnel, where light began to dim back to blackness.

Both arms caught Jason around the middle, and her weight was enough to topple even the hulking man to the floor. Caught off guard, Jason struggled to right himself, and thus was too slow to avoid Caitlin's punch to the side of his face. The contact rocketed pain up Caitlin's fractured arm, but for all she cared it might have been a bee sting. The gun clattered into the darkness and struck the wall.

Once he'd had time to process, Jason retaliated quickly. He kicked out at her, catching her in the side where she was already sore from the tire iron attack. She absorbed the blow as best she could, but it still took her breath away as she rolled backward.

Evidently Jason didn't notice the gun, or didn't care. He struggled to his feet, catching himself against the wall, and towered over Caitlin. She couldn't see his face well, given the half-light, but to her, he looked less malicious than panicked. Still, that didn't prevent him from stomping down, hard, on the arm encased in plaster—the attack more deliberate than anything he'd done previously.

She must have screamed: she felt it in her throat, and behind her Joe called, "Caitlin!"

The agony was exquisite, radiating in barbs from her arm, somehow spreading throughout her body. But it was only pain. It would've taken a lot more than pain to stop her now.

Instinctually, perhaps irrationally, she flung herself from the floor. Jason's unsteady footsteps continued down the hallway, fast disappearing. Caitlin followed, ducking down once to retrieve the gun from the floor. Another cry of "Caitlin, wait!" came from behind her, but she outdistanced the words. She chased the darkness, watched as Jason's outline grew dimmer.

Just as he reached the division where the light no longer reached, she caught up with him. This time she went for his legs. Again they both went down, but Caitlin maintained the upper hand. She clocked him hard with the barrel of the gun, eliciting a grunt of pain. He rolled to his back, hands going up. She struck him again, the metal of the gun catching him across the face and opening up a satisfyingly-similar cut on the bridge of his nose to the one on Caitlin's. She hit him again, this time with her own fist, the injured arm. Then again. And again. The pain now made her stronger, with every punch. It numbed her.

"Caitlin, stop!"

Jason moaned, and the words behind her again glanced off. She struck again.

Mouth full of blood, Jason spat out, "Hurting me won't erase what I've already done."

With a growl, she shoved his shoulders back into the ground, using that as leverage to rise to her feet.

"How about erasing your existence?" she asked, and with that she lifted up the gun and pointed it directly down at Jason.

In the span of a second, both of them might as well have been solidified. Jason froze on instinct, and Caitlin's grip on the gun was as steady as if she'd trained with it in her entire life. The light at Caitlin's back still eked out into the blackness she faced, but her shadow cast Jason completely in darkness. She couldn't see his expression as he spoke:

"I guess all of that earlier was a lie." When she didn't respond, didn't even make an attempt to question, he clarified: "I thought you kept trying to convince me that you weren't a killer."

The pad of Caitlin's finger brushed the trigger. The numbness thrummed through her body, and it was the only thing that mattered. The only thing she could comprehend. The world silenced, stilled.

Images of the past forty-eight hours plunged Caitlin deeper. Cisco's broken fingers and his wails. The blood pouring down Barry's face and arms. The hours of emptiness, of pain, of suffocating fear. Red, black, purple. Bruises and blood and bone. Helplessness like cold water, stealing breath away.

Caitlin looked down the gun at her terrorizer, all of those memories channeling through her. She felt it: _he deserved to die_.

His eyes widened, and she thought he knew it too.

The smoothness of the trigger creased her finger. His words had triggered something else inside of her, unexpected. Gone was the blood and the coldness—she was transported to the pipeline, kneeling on that floor, leaning in toward the glass where Rose Canton sat trembling. Her arm was throbbing with the pain of uncontrollable power, a thorn that cut to the bone. She was watching Canton's face soften, resolve.

A chill shuddered through Caitlin's body, dispersed.

"I hope you rot," she said.

And slowly, deliberately, she lowered the gun.

* * *

 **Thank you so, so much for reading! I suppose I should've prefaced this with "Welcome to the symbolism chapter."**

 **I look forward to hearing your thoughts! You have all been so perceptive and insightful and I love it. If you've made it this far, again, thanks so much. Two more to go!**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	11. Chapter 11

**Today's pre-chapter note comes to you in three parts:**

 **1\. I'm very, very sorry about the delay for this chapter. Without going into detail, due to some personal issues on Tuesday, I was not emotionally or mentally prepared to edit this beast. But! The chapter is a little longer than usual, so maybe that makes up for the wait! And finally-you haven't gotten whump in so long, but here it is, in extra doses.**

 **2\. Lots of questionable science/medicine in this chapter. I have done some research, but I am 100% certain that a lot of it is not accurate nor plausible. Bear with me. One medical instrument in particular is taken from the Flash Season Zero comic, and I don't think it actually exists in real life? But it is here.**

 **3\. I am a bad counter, I guess. For some reason I told you last chapter that there were two chapters to go! When clearly there were three! AFter this one there will be two! Bonus chapter!**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

The moment Caitlin lowered the gun, the area was flooded with activity. In the narrow, dim space, she had to squeeze herself tight against the wall to allow the passage of the two cops—she really would have to learn their names—and Joe. Caitlin clicked on the safety of the gun and handed it back to him wordlessly. He nodded infestiminally to show his understanding, then jerked his head in the direction of the main room.

"You'd better get to them quick," he said. "I'll be right there."

With the gun out of her hands, Caitlin shook like a leaf in a gale. She nodded back at Joe and took off down the passage, back toward the orange light. Handcuffs clinked behind her, Jason grunted. She left it behind.

In the open space with the lantern, Caitlin crossed to the two dark bundles at the far wall. They were a few feet apart, pressed close to the wall, half-hidden in shadows. There was no way to logically determine which one to go first. They both needed her attention. The question was, which needed it more immediately?

Without the luxury of time to make her decision, she ran to the first sign of overt distress and crumpled to her knees. It was harder to see any damage with Barry's dark blue STAR shirt and sweatpants, but Cisco was wearing a white shirt beneath the hoodie—the blood stood out starkly, and in terrifying amounts.

All confidence and poise dropped at once. With shaking hands, she lifted up Cisco's shirt to see what kind of damage she was working with. Blood. So much blood. While it didn't appear that he'd suffered any stab wounds, it did look as if Jason had used him as a sharpening board. She peeled off her jacket and bunched it up, seeking out the worst of the cuts to press against. Even that pressure wasn't enough to wake the man, whose head lolled in unconsciousness. The blood caked down the side of his face indicated a likely head wound to go along with the cuts.

Plus—yes, those were additional broken fingers on his left hand, a hand bound to the other with more zip-ties.

A whimper from her left made her look up. To her surprise, Barry's eyes were open as slits, watching her. He made another distressed noise and stirred feebly away, so Caitlin crawled over to him. When she reached out to touch him, he flinched.

"Hey, hey, it's alright, it's just me. Just Caitlin." Even the reassurance didn't do anything to settle Barry. She withdrew her hand. "You're safe now." Her eyes went to his hands. Like Cisco's, they were bound, but not by zip-ties—with razor wire. Jason must have learned his lesson from Barry phasing through his bonds earlier.

Joe's arrival went unheard, but she felt his presence as he kneeled beside her.

"The EMTs are on their way down," he said. "We've got an ambulance ready outside."

Caitlin was still too busy assessing Barry's condition to look up at Joe. Barry's sweatpants were too baggy to see much, but she remembered the crunch of Jason stepping on Barry's knee. From what she could see of the angles of Barry's legs, the assault hadn't ended there. And if he'd started healing already…

"Barry can't go to the hospital," she said suddenly. "His healing factor. Nobody knows that Jason kept them down here because they're metas. If Barry goes to a hospital, they'll know."

"His life is more important than his identity," Joe said.

"Let me handle them," Caitlin insisted. "One more favor, Joe. I know how to treat them better than anyone."

"Cisco," groaned Barry. "Please, his head…kept hitting his head…"

His face shone red from the old wounds and the fresh ones. Caitlin reached for his arm again, glanced back at Cisco, looked to Joe. "Please, Joe."

Footsteps hurried through the main passage, moving toward the half-shadowed group. The EMTs were quick, efficient, and driven, Caitlin knew.

Joe stood to greet them. "Two injured. We're taking them to STAR Labs."

"But—" one of the medics tried.

"They are equipped with state of the art medical equipment," Joe said. "The—victims—will be in good hands."

"I'm their personal physician," Caitlin added, fully aware of the threat she had once given Barry when he'd tried to use the term. "I assure you, I have a fully-stocked medical lab and assistants on-call." Alright, that may have been a stretch, but now that things were in action she felt as though she was running out of time once again.

Joe's word, or hers, must have carried more weight than she could've hoped to imagine.

"We need both of these guys on backboards," said the head EMT, a woman with a soft face but authoritative voice, said to the other two. They swarmed the scene, forcing Caitlin and Joe off to the side. In the flurry of activity, Caitlin wanted to interject _watch the legs, watch the head._ But these people were focused, and she was too afraid of disturbing something crucial.

As the EMTs did their initial work, Joe pulled Caitlin aside. Maybe he saw that she was beginning to lose her threads of stability. "You go in the ambulance with them, alright? I'll go ahead in the car and get everything ready for you. What do you need?"

 _I don't know, I have no idea_. "Just make sure Iris and Wells are ready to help. I might need hands."

"Ready to move!"

Joe gave her a reassuring nod, but now she could tell for certain that he was just as shaken as she was by what they had found.

In what felt like no time at all, she was outside in the dark again, the deep charcoal of midnight impending. She'd left her jacket down in the dungeon on Cisco's chest, and the night air lifted the hairs on her arms. In a daze she watched Barry and Cisco get loaded onto the ambulance, and automatically she followed.

Squeezed into the corner of the ambulance, Caitlin could feel herself drifting, detaching. It was a defense mechanism, she knew, because her body was rapidly shutting down under pressure. However, the EMTs didn't slow, so she forced herself to at least listen, gather facts, watch the preliminary steps of putting her friends back together. All other noise tuned out.

 _Possible fractured rib…pulmonary contusion…get the oxygen mask...stab wound…pressure here…dehydration…watch the leg…compound fracture…_

Only when the ambulance pulled to a stop did some of the chatter stop. As soon as it did, the action intensified. Immediately they pushed the doors open and, with trained precision, carted Barry and Cisco out.

With this head start, Joe had arrived at STAR first as promised. He waited at the entrance to the lab for the group, ushering them in and holding the door for Caitlin, who trailed like a lost animal even in the familiarity of the location.

Once they reached the cortex and the medical bay, though, once she saw the doubt creeping onto the EMTs faces, she slipped back into her role. She couldn't let them take Barry and Cisco away. She couldn't let anyone take Barry and Cisco away again.

"On these beds," she said, striding forward and motioning at two of the examination beds closest to her workstation. "Yes, just there."

"What else do you need?" asked the head EMT.

Caitlin looked her over once, took the apprehension that was being radiated and dampened it. "I can take it from here. Thank you very much."

One more look. One more moment of hesitation. Then, one by one, the EMTs filed out of the room. Off to the next emergency.

The minute they were gone, Caitlin sprang into action. She went to Cisco's side again, pulling open the shirt that the paramedics had sliced down the front. When he woke he would not be happy about that.

The presence of Joe and Iris and Wells had been a peripheral thing before; Iris sidling up behind her was similarly detached. "What can we do?"

"Gloves," Caitlin responded automatically, prodding lightly at a dark bruise on Cisco's chest. Her hands were already bloodied from the initial inspection of her friends, of course, but she needed the gloves. If only to reaffirm her professionalism. To reaffirm the fact that this wasn't crazy, that she had the power to save her best friends' lives, that something ordinary still existed.

A moment later Iris handed her the gloves. Just as she snapped them on, a moan drew her attention up in laser focus.

"Barry," she said, briefly leaving Cisco's side to tend to the speedster. She put a hand on his arm to keep him from trying to roll off of the bed. "You're okay. Shh. You're safe."

"No, no." Barry whined, eyes unfocused. "Stay away from them."

"Barry. Do you know where you are?" Caitlin said, simultaneously trying to get him to focus and checking his wrists, which had been sliced free from the razor wire.

Barry squinted. "Caitlin?"

"I'm safe too," Caitlin said. "You're at STAR. I'm going to take care of you."

"I can't run," he mumbled, clearly dazed. "I can't…"

He trailed off, and Caitlin motioned to Wells. "X-ray," she said to him. "Oxygen to Cisco," she directed Iris. As these orders were carried out, she took hold of the compress that had been applied to Barry's shoulder and continued pressing down. From her hurried overview, it looked as though Jason had re-created the wounds that had speed-healed earlier, including the stab wound below Barry's collarbone. Barry winced at the pressure, so, to distract him, she asked, "Hey, can you stay with me? What do you remember?"

"Kept hitting Cisco's head," Barry mumbled, barely intelligible. "I couldn't—I couldn't—"

"Shh," Caitlin said again, looking up worriedly at Cisco. Iris was fitting him with an oxygen mask. The blood down the side of his face, and the fact that he hadn't yet shown signs of waking, troubled her. These new details began confirming what she already suspected, that Jason had targeted their powers with specificity: Barry's legs, Cisco's head.

"X-ray on his legs," Caitlin instructed Wells, who had arrived with the portable x-ray machine. "Joe—keep pressure here." With surprising agility, Joe was at her side, taking her place with the cloth against Barry's shoulder. She just caught Barry's confused "Joe?" before turning away to give her attention to Cisco.

"I've been cleaning these up as much as I can," said Iris shakily. In a calmer situation, Caitlin might have felt a rush of appreciation for the other woman—though she still needed guidance when it came to the more serious medical emergencies, she had learned a lot in the past year. She had cleaned up Cisco's chest enough to see clearly the cuts on it. None of them seemed deep enough to require stitches, thankfully. The cleaning had revealed some new bruises across his ribs, though, added automatically to Caitlin's list of possible causes and effects and treatments.

"Light." She held out her hand. A second later Iris pressed the penlight into it. She peeled back one of Cisco's eyelids, the one not puffy from a bruise, and watched his pupil.

"I want to have this looked at before we give him any drugs," she said. "Wells, Joe—take him down to the MRI. We have some time before we have to set his fingers. No super-healing to worry about."

Wells and Joe obeyed immediately. As they rolled Cisco away, Caitlin moved on to the x-ray images.

"Speaking of super-healing…" she lowered the images and put herself back in Barry's unfocused field of vision. "Barry, did Jason inject you with the power-dampening serum?"

"I think…twice," Barry slurred. It was clear he was trying to be helpful, despite obviously hovering on the brink of awareness.

"That's what I thought," Caitlin said. To Iris, she said, "Get that machine over there."

Iris came back with the indicated wheeled contraption, an adjustable device with a reinforced tube at the end. "What does this do?"

As gently as she could, Caitlin tugged off what was left of Barry's torn sweatpants and threaded his left leg through the device until the hole encased his knee. The damage to both of his legs was far worse up close. They were bruised almost beyond recognition, and the mess of dark blood on the right one confirmed a compound fracture. The worst of the damage, though, was in the left knee.

"When Jason first found out that Barry was the Flash, he broke his knee," Caitlin explained, booting up the machine and punching a few buttons. "He let the power-dampening serum wear off so Barry's healing factor would knit everything back together, but improperly. I think he then re-broke the knee before administering the serum a second time. You can see in the x-ray. A poorly-healed break, and a fresh one in a different spot in the knee."

Apparently Iris didn't need to see to believe. She moved to the opposite end of the table, by Barry's head, and carded a hand through his hair as if she too instinctually knew what was coming. "So what is that for?"

Caitlin allowed for a tiny crease of sympathy across her face. The most she would allow. "To re-break it one more time. Cleanly." She pressed a few more buttons, and the cuff tightened around Barry's knee. Barry twitched feebly. She wasn't even sure how conscious he was at that point, but she chanced a glance upward. "I'm sorry, this is going to hurt for a second. Try to breathe." His bloodied face was slick with sweat.

She punched a button. A crack. A devastating scream.

 _And she was back. Back in the warehouse. Darkness was creeping under her skin, and her friends were screaming. The sounds cut deep, and she strained against her bonds. Except the screams were too loud, pressing against her. Except she was not bound. Except she was the one causing the pain, her eyes blazing frigid blue._

"Cait?"

Iris' voice brought her back to the present. A support on her back kept her from falling; she had begun swaying on the spot.

"Here, sit down," Iris said, guiding her over to a seat. "You need to rest. You're dead on your feet."

"What's going on up here?" Joe and Wells reentered the room with a still-unconscious Cisco. Joe nodded at Caitlin. "You good?"

"Fine." Caitlin resisted Iris' attempts to make her sit down. "What did you get from the MRI?"

"Severe concussion and pulmonary contusion," Wells said, his face a shade paler than usual. "You can take a look at the scans yourself—"

"Leave them here."

"Is there anything we can do?" Joe said, looking worriedly at Barry, who had passed out again.

"I can help set Cisco's fingers," Iris said.

"Or stitch up Barry's shoulder—"

"I'm fine," Caitlin said. Though the pain levels made it understandable, she still didn't like Barry's unresponsiveness, coupled with the confusion and the intense shivering that had begun. Not to mention Cisco's internal trauma. Back on her feet, the triaged lists of necessary actions were stretching longer, organizing themselves. "I need you all to leave."

Iris was the one to come forward. "Let us help you, Cait."

"You can help me by giving me some space," Caitlin snapped before the broaching anxiety could overwhelm her. "I need to concentrate." The truth was, she couldn't afford any slip-ups, and, while she trusted the rest of her team, she was unwilling to let anything or anyone slip through her fingers.

The group must have sensed how dead serious she was, because, after a pause, they filed out of the room silently. There would be hell to pay later, Caitlin supposed—guilt for being harsh with them, or remorse if anything happened on her watch.

But for now, with her two best friends unconscious and bleeding before her, alone was good. Alone was the only thing holding her together. With a deep breath and a grimace of determination, she went to work.

* * *

 **Thanks for reading! Two more chapters to go (for real this time). I hope the medical drama wasn't too distracting. The whump is definitely back.**

 **As always, I appreciate feedback. I'll see you all on Sunday (also for real this time).**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	12. Chapter 12

**This chapter is a bit shorter, with a touch more questionable medicine, but-we're nearing the end! Thanks for sticking with it!**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

A jolt of fear zinged through her, startling her eyes open—the cold, the sensation of waking up with no recollection of where she was, a sense that she was supposed to be afraid. Heart pounding, she lifted her head stiffly and realized she was not in the warehouse, but the STAR medical bay. She'd fallen asleep in a chair she'd pulled up between the beds, arms folded and head rested on the edge of Cisco's mattress. Her own hurts ached more than ever, but just as she started pulling herself back to stretch, she realized that Cisco was looking at her beneath half-lidded eyes.

"Sleeping beauty," he said, his words a bit slurred.

Caitlin got to her feet perhaps a bit too quickly—after all, she probably had a mild concussion herself. The dizziness overwhelmed her, and she sank back. While the doctor part of her wanted to run tests immediately, the emotional part of her was so relieved her legs trembled too much to support her.

"Especially with the black eye," Cisco continued belatedly. He blinked slowly. Tried to refocus.

"How do you feel?" Caitlin said, assessing these signs while simultaneously glancing up to read his vitals.

"Are you gonna ask me the name of the President and my birthday and all that?" Cisco said.

"Maybe in a little while," Caitlin said gently. The shadows beneath his eyes were so dark they looked as if they'd been created with eyeshadow. Sure, everything about him was cleaner—she'd bandaged up his bare chest and cleaned up most of the dried blood and dirt from his face—but the gauntness was perhaps more pronounced than ever.

After a slight pause, Cisco shifted, winced. "It hurts."

"Four of the fingers on your left hand are broken, and you have a pulmonary contusion," Caitlin explained. "On a scale of one to ten, how would you say—"

"Please," Cisco said. "Cait, I don't want a doctor right now. I want my friend."

A pause, then Caitlin softened. "Sorry. I can't give you much in the way of painkillers yet because of your concussion. What can I do to make you more comfortable?"

He blinked sluggishly again, eyes opening again in a half-squint. Somehow, he managed an awkward, one-shouldered shrug. Instead of answering, he looked past her. "Is Barry okay?"

Caitlin glanced back as well. Barry's heart monitor beeped steadily, if slower than usual. She'd stitched up the hole in his shoulder and put both legs in casts, and he too was drawn and pale.

"I'm working on it," Caitlin said. "Even with the power-dampening serum in his system, he went into hypoglycemic shock. I'm keeping an eye on him, but he should be fine. You both should."

Cisco's eyes lingered on Barry a moment longer before trailing lethargically to her. "And you?"

"I'm fine," Caitlin repeated for what felt like the millionth time.

"Right." Even in his low monotone, Cisco's sarcasm did not go unnoticed. His eyelids fluttered. "But you saved us, right?" He drew in a deep, ragged breath, and his eyes closed entirely. "Superhero Caitlin Snow."

"Let's not get carried away now," Caitlin stood again, this time with more success. She rested a hand lightly above his bruised wrist, her heart suddenly pained. "Get some rest, okay? I'll check up on you in a bit."

He was already gone.

Through she was certain that no amount of noise she could make would wake the man, Caitlin still moved as quietly as she could through the room. A glance at the clock revealed that it was almost eleven in the morning; she'd been asleep quite some time. A cursory check of Barry's wounds confirmed her suspicions that his speed healing was severely compromised, as the cuts to his face and arm hadn't sealed up at all. She looked over his vitals and adjusted one of the IVs in his arm. The numbers were better, but still not great—no matter how tempting it was, she didn't allow herself to think the word _coma._ She couldn't label that just yet.

Once she was mostly satisfied with what she saw, she tiptoed stiffly from the room. She'd fallen asleep immediately after finishing up her main treatment, which meant that the rest of the team still didn't know Barry and Cisco's status. And, with the snappy way she'd forced them to leave, they were probably too afraid to come in and check.

However, when she went out into the main room to inform them, she found that all three were fast asleep. Wells had elected to take a rest on one of the spare beds in an adjoining room of the cortex, but Iris and Joe sprawled haphazardly in chairs, Iris' head on Joe's knees and Joe's chin dropped to his chest. Caitlin recalled seeing a similar position many times in the nine months of Barry's coma, particularly in the early months when there was hope that just their presence was a healing factor. As with then, Caitlin let them rest; there was nothing to be accomplished now by disturbing them. Lord knew they all needed to recover from the stress and sleeplessness of the past few days.

She tiptoed past them to the computer bank and clicked on the screen. She held her breath as the image materialized.

 _You saved us. Superhero Caitlin Snow. You saved us._

In her cell, Canton tucked herself against the wall, sobbing.

Caitlin clicked off the screen and turned away.

The chair in the medical bay was sounding awfully appealing, so she made her way back across the room. Iris stirred in her seat, but her eyes didn't open. The cortex remained shrouded in darkness and in quiet and in dreams. It weighed down as a physical presence, almost stifling the heavy sense of dread lingering beneath Caitlin's ribs.

The world of sleep preceded every step until she closed the door behind her in the medical bay. To her surprise, Cisco's eyes were open again, wider than before. The heart monitor beside him beeped frantically. Still, despite the physical signs with which his body betrayed him, he kept his voice remarkably level.

"Is everyone okay?" he asked.

Caitlin stayed near the doorway, paralyzed by something unspeakable. "Everyone is fine," she replied. "There will be time to explain later. Try to get some sleep."

His mouth pressed into a hard line. He looked away, fixed his gaze on the ceiling. The heart monitor began to slow down, bit by bit, but Caitlin had heard how fast it had been going.

"Nightmare?" she asked.

Mutely, Cisco nodded.

Feeling almost too stiff and weighed down to move, Caitlin forced herself forward, back into his company, and collapsed in the chair. In the darkened med bay, she thought it wrong that the two beeping heart monitors acted as such a balm—so much had gone wrong, so much had gone off course, and the quiet and sterility soaked up the wake of calamity. A great, unattainable distance lay between the superheroes of chocolate bars and pop songs and the three battered, half-dead creatures in the med bay now.

Caitlin reached forward and took Cisco's hand, not even pretending not to notice the way his eyes went glassy with tears. "Well, the least we can do is to have them together," she said wearily, and she leaned her head forward on the bed again, letting the whirr and beep of machines usher in unsteady sleep.

* * *

The first time Joe and Iris entered the medical bay, the first time they roused Caitlin from where she'd fallen asleep against the bed, the change was immediate.

"They're fine," Caitlin blabbered, groggy and insubstantial-feeling, every bone weak. "They're fine, fine, I promise they're going to be fine…"

"Shh," Joe said, helping Iris lift her to her feet. "Come on. Easy."

They'd dragged out another spare bed into the already-cramped room, so guiding Caitlin to the sink was somewhat of a challenge. Iris kept a firm hand on her elbow, but Caitlin's hip still struck the edge of a metal table. Her muscles wouldn't move right; her brain was sluggish with exhaustion and pain.

"They're gonna be okay," she kept muttering over and over, desperate for Iris and Joe to know that at least. "I'm so sorry I didn't—I didn't wake you—"

"C'mere." Iris guided her hands to the sink and turned on the water. At some point, Caitlin must have removed her gloves, though she didn't remember doing so. Dark blood caked her fingers, gathered beneath her fingernails, smeared up her bruised wrists and arms.

The warm water and soap washed away all of that and more, almost instantly. Automatically, mechanically, Caitlin picked at the crust beneath her nails. The water swirled pink down the drain. Some of it must have been hers, residual blood from old injuries, but it was impossible to distinguish her blood from Cisco's from Barry's, human from metahuman—it swirled together and sloughed off her skin as one.

At once, Caitlin began to cry. Not the controlled, restrained tears she'd allowed herself in the warehouse or in the hospital, but a world-shattering, bone-quaking sob that originated deep in her gut. For a few seconds it was mostly silent, but after a few more, the shaking in her shoulders was too pronounced to ignore.

"It's okay," Iris said as the sobbing began in earnest, but the words were much like Caitlin's own just minutes before. Methodical. Necessary. Caitlin's hands had frozen beneath the tap, so Iris turned off the water and guided her away.

Blinded by tears, Caitlin didn't even comprehend where they were going until her knees hit the spare bed. By some miracle, Joe and Iris got her up on the hard hospital mattress. She registered the fabric and the soft, comforting sounds Joe and Iris continued making. The rest of the world was lost. The rest of the world was drowned out by the emotion that spilled out of her like acid, rendering her immobile, curled in on herself, wracked by sobs so painful they set her bones aflame.

* * *

 **One more to go! Thanks for reading, and, as always, I love hearing your feedback.**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


	13. Chapter 13

**Here we are at last! Final chapter. Not gonna lie, this one's a toughie-but you all have been so great so far, that eases my nerves a bit. There will be more thanks later, but for now, without further ado, the wrap-up!**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

"Take it slow," Caitlin said. "Push yourself and you're only going to make it worse."

"Trust me," Barry said. "Going fast is the last thing on my mind right now."

With a comforting squeeze, Caitlin grasped Barry's arm. Shakily he offered her a smile and scooted to the edge of the bed. His right leg slid forward and touched the ground. The damage to that one had been bad, but it had healed faster than the other, the one with the shattered knee. He eased that one over next, but didn't quite touch it to the floor. The apprehension was clear on his face.

"I'm not sure I can do this," he confessed quietly, just loud enough for Caitlin to hear.

Caitlin laced her fingers through Barry's, cognizant of the wounds on his wrists from the razor wire, and braced her other hand against his back. "If it hurts too badly, we'll stop. But I'll be right here. Okay? I'm right here."

Barry threw her an appreciative look and straightened his back. "Alright. Let's do this."

In one hand he gripped the cane, the same cane he'd used following Zoom's attack; the other hand gripped Caitlin's in a vice. The first step off of the bed was shaky, and for an instant Caitlin was certain he was going to sit back down and give up. But, in true Barry fashion, he grimaced through and held his ground.

"Ten out of ten for persistence." From his own bed, Cisco slurped loudly on a smoothie. "Five out of ten for form, though."

Barry, partially doubled up, limping heavily on his knee, glowered. "I don't see you doing anything better."

"I'm not supposed to move, remember? Doctor's orders." Cisco took another innocent sip of smoothie and leaned back against the pillows that propped him up. Two days since the rescue, much of the color had returned to his face, but the bruises around his eyes still gave a distinct raccoon impression.

"Well, you don't have super-healing," Caitlin reprimanded lightly. "And you," she said to Barry, catching him as he stumbled forward with a grunt, "Even your healing has been compromised. It's a miracle you've healed at all given how much that serum's affected you."

"Usually I'd be walking by now," Barry grumbled.

"This isn't _usually_ ," said Caitlin. "And look, you _are_ walking."

He'd managed a few steps, more shuffles than anything, using the cane and Caitlin for support. All in all, he too looked loads better than a few days ago. A thin pink line on his face and arm were the only signs that he'd been cut, though the drug injections and lingering low glucose levels had severely impacted his ability to heal up the broken bones in his legs and the stab wound in his shoulder.

Her words must have jinxed it: right as she said them, his knee crumpled, and his full weight fell on her. He gasped, and she squeaked at the effort of supporting him with both arms. He regained his footing just enough to hobble back to the bed with Caitlin's help, Cisco cringing in sympathy across the room.

Once she'd gotten Barry back on the bed, Caitlin allowed herself a hiss of pain, blinking back tears. Barry noticed, and his face fell.

"Your arm," he said. "I'm sorry. We should have waited for Iris to help."

"It's nothing," Caitlin said, despite the fact that a fractured arm supporting the weight of an injured speedster was far from _nothing_. "You're making progress."

"You don't have to try and make me feel better," Barry said, pulling himself back onto the pillows. He reached for his half-eaten calorie bar and wiped at his sweat-slicked forehead. "Seriously," he added, half-heartedly batting at her hand as she tugged up his shirt to check his stitches.

"I just want to make sure you didn't pull anything," Caitlin said stubbornly. As much as she tried to hide it, an intense throb in her aggravated arm made her wince. She caught Cisco's eye across the room. "What?"

"Really," Cisco said. "Take a breather, Cait. Just because we're both on mandatory bed rest doesn't mean you can't be, too."

"If I was on bed rest, who would look after your sorry butts when you opened up your cuts while trying to reach the remote?"

"That was one time!"

"Mm." Caitlin pulled Barry's shirt back down and cut Cisco's protest off with a withering stare. "Don't test me, Cisco Ramon."

"Don't make her angry, Cisco," Barry said. "Trust me, I've been on the receiving end of the Ice Queen's wrath before, and it's not pretty."

"That's because you've broken your nose four times trying to speed-vault over the fence outside."

But Cisco's comment was all but lost on Caitlin. Barry's words seemed to fill her ears with rushing water, the kind that built up in her head and dropped slowly, weighing her down to the floor, drowning out everything else. _The Ice Queen's wrath._

"Cait? I was only joking, sorry. You okay?"

Caitlin snapped out of it just enough to answer Barry's question with a tight smile. "Of course. Listen, you two should have some real food. What would you like?"

"Big Belly Burger," Cisco said, at the same time that Barry shouted, "Three pizzas!"

Caitlin rolled her eyes. "I have jell-o and pudding. Maybe some soup if you're lucky."

She shouldered the dual groans with grace. This kind of abuse she was used to handling.

"Both of you lie back and rest," she said. "I'll be back up soon."

She knew they probably wouldn't rest, but she turned her back like a resolute mother on misbehaving children. Their grumblings followed her out of the cramped med bay and into the cortex, finally ceasing once she had made it to the stairs. She descended with the sound of her echoing footsteps in her ears. It was the only thing to distract from the still-throbbing pain in her arm and the loudness of her thoughts.

Instead of stopping at the floor where their makeshift lab kitchen was, she kept descending. She hadn't made this trip since talking to Canton three days ago; meal duty had been temporarily relegated to Joe while Caitlin and the others recovered, and she didn't make a point of going down to the pipeline if she didn't absolutely have to.

Still, once she reached the bottom level, she squared her shoulders and punched in the entry code to the pipeline.

Almost before the door had even opened, the voice greeted her. "It's been a while," Canton said immediately from her cell, lifting her head at Caitlin's arrival. "How are they?"

"Like you care," Caitlin said. So they were cutting to the chase. Caitlin appreciated that. She tried to cross her arms, realized how painful that was, and settled for resting one hand on her hip. "You're the one who told me that they were better off dead, weren't you?"

Canton was in much the same position as before, sitting with her knees drawn up at the back of the cell. She looked cramped, small—though the pipeline cells would make anyone look that way. Three days in the cell had only made Canton paler and more drawn, her eyes rimmed with sleeplessness. Much of the hostility in her face was absent, wiped away by something like acceptance.

"Maybe I said that," she said. "Doesn't mean I want them dead."

"Right." Caitlin hoped that the sarcasm infused in her voice was strong enough.

Canton readjusted herself. "I've told you, it was Jason. Things got out of control. I never wanted to hurt anyone."

"You just wanted to ruin people's lives," Caitlin said. "Metahuman lives."

"Can you blame me for trying to get rid of the metagene?" Canton said. "Wouldn't things be better without powered people?"

A retort was prepped on Caitlin's tongue, but, before the heat could fully rise to her face, she stopped herself. She knew the root of Canton's argument, and she also knew that arguing it further wouldn't do anything to heal either of them. She closed her mouth and let out a breath, willing herself to stay calm.

"You came down here for a reason," Canton said after the pause. "Or just because you need company?"

Caitlin measured her up. "Barry and Cisco are fine. Well, going to be fine. Jason did a number on them."

The fire also retreated from Canton's face, and she seemed to shrink in relief. "At least they're alive. The detective…he wouldn't tell me anything."

"I wanted to come down here," Caitlin continued without pause, "to apologize."

This, at least, took Canton off guard. "Apologize?"

 _Superhero Caitlin Snow._

"For the interrogation room," Caitlin said. "I stepped over the line with the poison."

 _The Ice Queen's wrath._

This registered with Canton. "Some might say you were justified," she said. "Some payback for what Jason and I did."

"Yeah, well," Caitlin said, "maybe that's the difference between you and me."

She let this stretch for a bit, unsure of what else there was to say, uncertain of what her intentions of confronting Canton had been.

As if she could read minds, Canton said, "Did you just come down here to prove your moral superiority?"

"I came down here to tell you that you can be better," Caitlin said. "I don't want to keep you here." Without hesitation, almost without thinking, Caitlin reached over and punched the code for the cell door. With a squeal, the door slid open. Inside, Canton froze, arms still wrapped around her knees protectively.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"Nobody deserves to be locked up in one of these cells for long," Caitlin said. "I've realized that over time."

"What about dangerous people?" It was amazing how quickly she had gone from borderline antagonistic to wholly terrified. She pressed herself back into the wall like a caged animal. "People like me?"

"People _like you_ aren't so different from people _like me_ ," Caitlin said. "The metagene doesn't change your character or determine your destiny."

"Doesn't it?" Canton said. "You know what I'm talking about, don't you? You said you had seen what you could become. If you let the darkness in."

For the first time in weeks, Caitlin finally re-allowed herself to consider Killer Frost. While she hadn't seen Earth-2 herself, she could infer a lot from what Barry and (mostly) Cisco had described. And while Cisco had spouted endlessly about how crazy his doppelganger had been, how so totally backwards everything and everyone had appeared, how unlike Caitlin Killer Frost had seemed, Caitlin wasn't entirely convinced.

After all, in that world, Iris was a cop, the very profession she'd dreamed about on Earth-1. She and Barry were still attracted to each other, even married. Harrison Wells was still a genius, still the founder of STAR Labs. Though circumstance had changed some people on Earth-2, most noticeably Caitlin and Cisco, it didn't seem like their hearts were so completely removed from their Earth-1 counterparts.

If the incident in the interrogation room had told Caitlin anything, it was that the metagene was far from the thing that had turned Killer Frost evil.

"I don't think I believe in destiny," Caitlin said. "I believe, and I understand, that you wanted to develop that power-suppressing serum partly for yourself," she continued, "and that you didn't anticipate how much Jason would hurt us."

"So, what, you're just going to let me go?"

"I'm going to give you an improved version of that serum," Caitlin said. "And I'm going to give you what I've been fortunate enough to receive: a chance to redeem yourself."

She held out a vial. Canton looked at it.

"That serum isn't going to be enough to keep Thorn away," she the woman said. "Not for long."

"No, but you'll be enough," Caitlin responded. "You spent, what, two years keeping Thorn out of your head? Or, at least, enough out of your head that she didn't take over," she corrected at Canton's look. "The point is, killing your fiancé was not your fault. And until five days ago, you never hurt anyone else."

"I'll venture repeating myself," Canton said cautiously. "You're going to let me go after what I did to you and your friends?"

"Oh, don't test me too much," Caitlin said coldly, rolling the vial Canton's direction. "Part of the reason I feel obliged to let you go is because I think it's a miracle somebody in this lab hasn't killed you yet for what you did to Barry and Cisco and me. But I also know that the police, and everybody else, knows that you're a metahuman. And once people know you're a metahuman...well." She dipped her chin, hoping Canton would get the message.

Canton, for her part, shifted uncomfortably. The vial stopped rolling near her foot. She didn't pick it up. "Maybe it's for the best. You know what I'm capable of."

Caitlin nodded stiffly, feeling the chill rise in her throat. "And you should know that I'm not afraid of what you're capable of. Not anymore. If you hurt anyone else, if I get any whiff that you're making some kind of name for yourself as a villain, I will find you. And I will put you back in this cell that you likely deserve. But, for now, I'm giving you a chance. And that serum. And my phone number, so you can contact me if you ever feel Thorn rising and need help."

She took a slip of paper from her pocket and held it up. At long last, with a continued dubious glance, Canton stood from the floor of her cell.

"Aren't your friends going to be angry that you let me go?" she said, walking tentatively out of the cell toward Caitlin.

"They'll get over it," Caitlin said firmly. She hadn't decided yet when, or how, to tell everyone else about letting Canton go, but, for some reason, it didn't concern her. "I'm trusting you to not make me regret this."

" _Are_ you going to regret this?" Canton said, accepting the slip of paper that contained Caitlin's cell number.

Caitlin offered her a tiny, wry smile. "Already starting to. You'd better go quick."

There was fear in Canton's eyes, the kind that clouded over the green of her irises that had so much potential to be beautiful. But, despite the inexpressible terror that lingered on her face, she managed a nod. "Thank you," she said in practically a whisper.

Caitlin swallowed. "Take a right. Door at the end of the hall."

After all that had happened, Caitlin figured she probably should have watched her back as Canton left. But she couldn't bring herself to. Instead she just listened to the footsteps fade and disappear.

She stared into the empty pipeline cell for a minute longer, wondering detachedly which meta they had kept there before Canton. When she couldn't come up with an answer, when her brain eased her away from the subject in exhaustion, she shut the pipeline door. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she glanced at the screen.

 _Jason transferred out of Iron Heights by higher-ups. Not sure where. Canton okay?_

The text from Joe glared up at her. She glanced up at the heavy pipeline door and chewed her lip.

 _I'll explain later,_ she replied.

Then she pocketed her phone and banished her unsettled thoughts to the room behind her.

With every step back up to the cortex, she felt somewhat lighter. She even remembered to grab three cans of soup from the pantry on her way up.

"Finally. I'm starv—hey, you didn't even cook it? What took you so long?"

Caitlin fielded Cisco's whine with a wave of the hand. "Relax, there's a hot plate up here."

It seemed Barry and Cisco had at least heeded her instructions to stay in bed, but one of them had managed to reach the remote to activate the sound system. A low hum droned through the room as Cisco toyed with his phone, searching for a selection.

In silence, Caitlin emptied each of the soup cans into the bowls they'd taken to keeping up near the med bay. Once they'd begun heating up, she turned back to the med bay and called, "I've got chicken noodle, minestrone, and tomato."

The boys called out their preference—leaving Caitlin with the canned chicken noodle, _of course_ —and she began ladling out the soup into three mugs. Barry in particular had been having trouble keeping anything down, and he would likely throw up even soup later. Cisco had been doing better in terms of eating, but Caitlin still erred on the side of caution. Technically, she could eat whatever she liked, since her injuries had been far less severe and mostly external, but it had become habit lately to eat whatever her patients were forced to endure. Perhaps it was solidarity, or sympathy, or guilt at being the one doling out pain.

"Bon appetit," Cisco said, wrinkling his nose at the steaming cup of minestrone Caitlin set on his bedside table.

"Nobody ever said healing was pleasant," Caitlin scolded lightly, handing Barry his mug. "Unfortunately, soup is one of the many vehicles of suffering you have to endure."

"All I can say is, I cannot wait for the day when I can eat normal food again," Barry said, blowing the top of his soup, looking more a tragic figure in a drama than anything. Caitlin rolled her eyes.

"Maybe tomorrow," she said. "Things are going to be back to normal before you know it."

The comment was punctuated by a moment of pointed silence, transforming the end of her statement into a question mark. All three of them paused, stagnated, unsure of how to proceed.

Because normal was levity and heroics and something planned. Normal was chocolate bars and music and worry that could be transformed into productivity. Normal was not this.

And perhaps normal could not exist after lightning struck.

Still, Cisco cleared his throat, shifted in his hospital bed. "I've made a new playlist," he said, and the quiet was broken, the three of them unfrozen from where they'd sat, paralyzed. Caitlin re-settled into her chair with a wince, raising the warm mug of soup to her lips, and let time continue. Cisco held up his phone. "Listen to this." And he pressed the button.

* * *

 **And that's a wrap! Like all good end notes by me, this one comes to you in multiple parts.**

 **First of all, I cannot thank you all enough for taking the time to read this story. It means the world to me that people invest energy into my writing with the enthusiasm and care that you do. Reading your comments honestly never fails to light up my days, and it motivates me to write more and to write better. Seriously, you are the best, and I cannot emphasize that enough. I have been writing fanfic on and off for 8 years, and I am so lucky to be a part of this community of extraordinary people.**

 **Speaking of writing more-as usual, I have a one-shot or two planned for the next few weeks, but I am already three chapters in to my next multi-chap fic. And, you heard it here first: it's a sequel to this one! I won't say too much more right now, but I have been so encouraged and inspired by the reactions to this fic (not to mention how much I have fallen in love with Caitlin as a character) that it just took off! It's hard to say when it will be completed and ready to post, but perhaps sometime in September. So, hooray!**

 **If you want to chat about the Flash or anything else, come find me on tumblr at pennflinn! Again, thanks so much for everything.**

 **Till next time,**

 **Penn**


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